Playwright: Joshua Rollins. At: Pine Box Theatre at The Second Stage, 3408 N. Sheffield. Tickets: www.pineboxtheater.org; $35. Runs through: Aug. 7
A Girl with Sun in Her Eyes could be this year’s hit cop play, like 2008’s A Steady Rain (which ended on Broadway with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman). Like Keith Huff’s hit, this gritty new play is an increasingly tense good-cop/bad-cop story set chiefly in the barren holding room of a local precinct. Steve Pickering is all-too-convincing as the sweating, menacing brutal bad cop Landy, while Karen Aldridge plays the far-more-sympathetic good cop Goggins, with the focus and quiet authority she so often brings to roles.
However, Goggins is the third side of a triangle between Landy and Lucy, another cop on the vice squad posing as a hooker, who’s crossed the line to entrapment and vigilantism. The play’s tension is in the relationship between Landy and Lucy (Audrey Francis casting a very dangerous aura), which is slowly revealed. We also meet two perps who’ve had the misfortune to fall prey, in a way, to Landy and Lucy: married father William (the totally believable Vincent Teninty), who’s entrapped by Lucy at a strip club, and Darnel (nice arrogance from Sean Parris), the surviving brother of a man killed by Lucy.
It’s this larger cast that marks the differences between A Steady Rain and A Girl with Sun in Her Eyes, despite similarities in look and feel. Huff’s two cops narrate all action and describe the other characters, while Rollins shows all the characters and most of the actions. The result isn’t as deep or strong or single-minded as A Steady Rain. Joshua Rollins’s play is much more like a TV cop show, with several underwritten or unimportant roles. One is likely to feel drawn more strongly to one story line or relationship than the others, and wonder why Rollins didn’t focus on that one. We never learn as much as we want to know about Landy and Lucy, nor does Rollins go deeply into the tension between Landy and Goggins over Lucy (who’s recently returned to Vice after time off), nor the unspoken understanding that arises between the perps. Cop-procedural fanatics also might question how some things go down.
Then again, Rollins’ intention never was to write the perfect cop drama. He explains in a program note that he’s really attempting to explore choices we make, often in “horrible situations,” and how even a small change in circumstances might substantially change the consequences. Along the way—almost as collateral dramatic damage—he explores collusion, deception, brutality and the exercise of power. That being said, Rollins’ work is more than good enough to make quite a crackling show, especially with this cast and staged with conviction and economy by Matt Miller. It’s a good rebirth for Pine Box after a three-year hiatus.