Comments on: Honey Brown Eyes

By: Jessica Anya Blau

Jessica Anya Blau — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 19:29:56 +0000

I agree with Michael Johnson’s summary that the play was powerful and moving. One of the things that was so moving about it, was what the reviewer calls “the juxtaposition of the horrors mingling with everyday banality.” Popular culture has so thoroughly entered most cultures on the planet that it is inexorably linked to both the brutality and the beauty of life. Music, in particular, plays a strong part in Ms. Zadravec’s play: it is the link between Alma and Dragon, Jovanka and Denis, and Jovanka and her grandson. It is thing that links soldiers to their homeland. Think of Toby Keith’s impact on American troops today. When the young girl in Honey Brown Eyes says her name is Rudy Huxtable (a Cosby child from The Cosby Show) it is both touching and heartbreaking–an example of a shattered soul reaching for some way to adhere herself to a better world, a better life, and a place (the place of sitcoms) where the people you love aren’t being murdered for reasons that are beyond a child’s comprehension.
The performances in Honey Brown Eyes were all startling, moving and chilling in their ability to make the audience feel an intimacy with the savagery of the conflict. I would highly recommend this play to anyone who is interested in humanity and the things that pull us together and drive us apart.

By: Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:08:38 +0000

First and foremost, your review comes dangerously close to containing spoilers, something I think your reviewer should have considered when writing this piece, as a courtesy to your audience.

Secondly, what you question as a premise — “the horrors of everyday life mingling with everyday banality” — is exactly what war has become in modern times, and your questioning of its authenticity reveals an ignorance about what actually happens in modern war. People who are trying to live normal lives are caught in the middle. War no longer occurs on remote battlefields between uniformed soldiers. It happens in people’s living rooms and kitchens. It comes into their lives in heartbreaking and shattering ways. Honey Brown Eyes avoids the cliches of most “war plays” and in so doing provides a real, tangible, human perspective of its devastation.

At the same time, the humanity and subtle humor instilled into key moments in the play reveal a sensitivity to character to realism often lacking in works dealing with the same issue.

We expected to see a war play; instead we were treated to the promise of great theater everywhere: we shared the action with the players on stage and, in so doing, became part of the experience in all its exuberant and heart-breaking moments. Powerful and moving are the two words I’d use to describe Ms. Zadravec’s Honey Brown Eyes.

By: monica

monica — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:19:05 +0000

This is a powerful play, and I think what the reviewer takes as dazed and perplexed is a fully engaged and shell-shocked audience.
Also, the reviewer has so many facts wrong here (the older woman was a Serb, wanting to hear Mahler) that I wonder if she was really paying attention… Serbian Croatians? Huh? what does that even mean?
This was one of the most original pieces of work I have seen in a long time.