Wednesday, January 26, 2011

A Tale of Two Plays

Sue Cremin and Edoardo Ballerini in Honey Brown Eyes.

With America's political attention aimed at ourselves these days, and what little energy we have to focus on international affairs devoted to conflicts in the Middle East, Honey Brown Eyes' subject — the Bosnian War — seems like it happened a century ago. (I know it happened in the 20th century, but you get my drift.)

Promising playwright Stefanie Zadravec shows the effects of the war on two former friends who were members of a rock band and now are on opposing sides of the conflict. Not only do they end up in different cities, but they also appear to be stranded in different plays in the Working Theater production that I saw for Time Out New York. The first act plays like an over-the-top melodrama, the second, an understated character study.