When Molly’s enthusiastic husband Frank (Kieth Baker) learns about a surgeon that might be able to restore some of Molly’s sight, he talks her into having the operation saying: “She has nothing to lose.” Indeed, from his sighted perspective, she did have nothing to lose. But for someone who has only known a tactile world for over 40 years, she had everything to lose.

Her doctor, played by Dodds Delzell, understood this and understood that she was mostly there to please her husband. How did Molly feel? “Yes I wanted to see,” Molly says. “A fantasy in by head to have a brief excursion – not to live there.” With her sight restored, Molly couldn’t tell if the things she “did see were real or fantasy. The sight I had I couldn’t trust.”

Director Bronwen Shears had a real challenge with the play since each character is telling their side of the story. The actors don’t interact with the other actors. Instead, they interact with the audience. “…Brian Friel invokes the age-old Gaelic storytelling tradition, wherein the teller addresses the listener directly, supplying both narrative detail and dialogue,” says Shears. “One common thread that unites traditional stories… is that they provide an oral history of a people who expound on morality, teach us about the pleasures of a good life, and warn us of the despair that sometimes follows deeds that are well-intended but not selfless… Molly Sweeney explores the nature of vision itself both literal and metaphorical. It challenges our preconceptions, perceptions, assumptions about seeing, while revealing the transformative power that accompanies the receipt of a well meaning gift that is totally out of the realm of experience.”

Don’t miss this rich drama where darkness and light take on new meanings with tactile shades that illuminate a light deep within each of us.

For tickets or more information call (707) 523-4185 or visit www.6thstreetplayhouse.com.

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