Sophia Walker in Ohio State Murders | Photo by Michael Cooper
I actually read Ohio State Murders—Adrienne Kennedy’s short, stinging play—three times in one sitting; I wanted to make satisfying sense of the heinous acts at the core of the narrative. Described bluntly, they were baffling to me. I figured there were clues, situational specifics, that would enlighten me, provide valuable insight, afford the atrocity some psychological dimension. On the third reading, however, it dawned on me that, despite focused attention, perhaps I wasn’t meant to understand. People do awful things, all the time, and we can’t always access whatever interior mechanism has clicked into place to allow for, well… evil.
Oh, there is an admission, plainly expressed, which we hear third-hand, but it’s abstruse—deliberately so, I suspect. Make no mistake, I have my own evil to reckon with, but theis specific crime, and the feeble confession, don’t quite resonate with me. But that doesn’t lesson their impact, especially on our protagonist, Suzanne Alexander—brought to vivid life in this Shaw Festival production by the formidable Sophia Walker. Continue Reading