"This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim has no right to live." This quote from
Toni Morrison's 1970 debut novel The Bluest Eye, an adaptation of which is
currently playing on the Guthrie thrust stage, is a brilliant metaphor for the Civil Rights movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, the Women's Rights movement, the Gay Rights movement, really any cry for equality and justice. All we want is for all kinds of flowers to have a chance to grow. What they do with that chance is up to them, but the promise of America (a promise that feels like it's slipping further away every day) is that every flower, every child, is given an equal chance to grow and flourish and become their best self. The protagonist of
The Bluest Eye, a poor and "ugly" black girl named Pecola living in the 1940s, is not given that chance. This cast and creative team, most of whom are new to the Guthrie, bring Toni Morrison's story to heartbreakingly vivid life in an intense, engaging, at times humorous, and incredibly moving hour and 45 minutes of theater.
