Friday, December 3, 2004 `Eye' sees in shades of gray Rude Guerrilla production highlights ambiguity of life in a dying town. By ERIC MARCHESE Special to the Register Can there be any more powerful an image than that depicted by the phrase "eye of God," a being that sees every human action, recording it for some future day of judgment? In his 1997 drama "Eye of God," Tim Blake Nelson takes that phrase both literally and metaphorically. The play abounds in imagery and descriptions of witnessing critical events, seeing without noticing, losing sight of what's important in the mortal realm - and while these vision analogies may appear overdone, Rude Guerrilla Theater Company's staging puts the focus where it should be, on Nelson's characters. We're in Kingfisher, Okla., a tank town that saw its heyday during an earlier oil boom. Its only citizens are those lacking the will to leave. Among them are two waitresses at the local diner: the young Ainsley DuPree (Jami McCoy) and her middle-age colleague, Dorothy Spencer (Karen Harris). Ainsley's been writing to Jack Stallings (Darrin James), a convict, during his time prison. Jack, released on good behavior, is about to meet Ainsley for the first time. Her best days behind her, Dorothy has contented herself with her job and with raising her sister's 14-year-old son Tom [Tony Gilbert]. These two stories - Ainsley's involvement with Jack and Dorothy and Tom's lives - are the crux of "Eye of God." Of themselves, they have little new to offer. Nelson, though, introduces the details of both plotlines gradually, and rather than chronologically, he tells each story through several overlapping timelines that culminate in Ainsley's murder. What's more, "Eye of God" is carefully crafted, interwoven with a variety of themes: religious faith and salvation, tenderness and violence, human connection and isolation, birth and infertility, and - most noticeably - knowing through seeing vs. ignorance through lack of sight. Perhaps better known as a film actor ("Minority Report," "The Thin Red Line" and "O Brother, Where Art Thou?") and director ("O"), than as a playwright, Nelson isn't the most original. His skill lies in organizing his materials so that they amplify understanding of his characters. Director Andrew Nienaber's staging at the Empire Theater is often ungainly and inexpressive, but he and his cast know to overplay Nelson's text is to reduce it to something laughably melodramatic. His four principals - McCoy, James, Harris and [Gilbert] - underplay beautifully, creating genuine empathy for their characters who, like the town they inhabit, seem mere shadows of what they once might have been. So solid is Nienaber's cast that even the smaller roles are distinctive: Jessica Aldridge as Ainsley's blasé pal, David Cramer's cranky diner owner and Jaryl Draper as a truck-stop clerk who uses a pair of jawbreakers as eyeballs (eyes, get it?). McCoy and James bring just the right degree of tension to the relationship of Jack, who has found new meaning through Jesus and Ainsley, smitten with Jack but uncertain of her religious beliefs. McCoy's Ainsley is touchingly vulnerable, mired in boredom and helplessness. James is, at first, a soft-spoken, gentle man open to the choices freedom offers. Only later does he reveal the depths of fanaticism his newfound piety has wrought. One could hope for more grit from both actors, but each is otherwise well in his or her element. In a role with little dialogue, [Gilbert] displays his teen character's quiet sense of yearning, alienation from his elders and resentment of his aunt as his guardian. In that role, Harris uses restrained strokes to display her character's crushing loneliness and the agony her devotion to Tom inevitably brings her. Nelson takes two seemingly stock roles - Jack's parole officer Sprague and the town's hapless sheriff - and imbues them welcome degrees of complexity. Steven Parker's Sprague matches Jack's laid- back façade and hidden, volcanic depths of anger. "Eye of God" is told primarily from the viewpoint of Sheriff Rogers, played by James Manley Green as a deliberate man who reflects upon the evidence from every angle before weighing in. Raised in a devoutly religious home, Rogers equates police work with belief in God; Nelson's dialogue humanizes the role, a process completed by Green's stoic yet moving performance. Copyright 2004 The Orange County Register Freedom Communications, Inc.