Three Blind Mice- A Journey of Self-Discovery and into the Light

 

          Reviewing theater reminds me of a story a friend once told me. Working in retail, he said he’ll see women (and men) come into his store pushing a baby stroller and, as they make their way through the aisles, cause fellow customers to stop, look at the baby and say things like “what a cute baby!” or “this is the sweetest child I’ve ever seen.” All this no matter how comely or homely the baby might be.

          Similarly, a reviewer is asked to comment on a playwright’s work, his love child, if you will. Some plays are pleasant and engaging, others not so much. The problem is how do you delicately write about the latter to stay true to the truth yet do so empathetically enough so as not to eviscerate the playwright’s confidence or spark an intense personal vendetta.

          If Pittsburgh playwright Darrin J. Friedman, whose play Three Blind Mice I just saw this past Friday, is reading this review and thinks he knows where all this is leading, he can breathe a sigh of relief. I can officially proclaim he’s the father of a handsome, muscular and healthy son. If a play can be assigned a gender, Three Blind Mice is male, considering all three characters are men dealing with issues that concern their male identities.

          New to the world of creating dramatic narrative, Friedman wrote his first play during the covid epidemic when he “desperately needed to do something creative,” As he wrote, he found himself creating a world that felt real, and he was “getting off on it.”

          With encouragement from his wife, Heather, he enrolled at Point Park University to earn an MFA in writing for stage and screen. Now with three full length and two short plays in the hopper, he saw Three Blind Mice get its world premiere in mid-January at Carnegie Stage in Carnegie. Previously, the work got a public viewing as part of PICT Bards from the Burgh / Staged Reading Series in July of 2024.

          For a newbie, Friedman deserves high marks for his first foray onto the stage, and I can proudly say that I was one of the first on my feet to give his work a standing ovation when all was said and done.

          At intermission, I had a chance to ask him if he had much to do with selecting his cast. He said he did, and I told him how good I thought his selections were. Not only were they individually compelling personalities, but they worked together as well as a team on its way to the Super Bowl.

          As the play opens, the three men discover one another at the funeral parlor paying their respects to a fellow high school alumnus. Now middle aged, they recall their shared high school experiences through some polite and restrained chit chat to break the ice on the lengthy hiatus of their friendships that really feel more like acquaintances than close camaraderie.

          Deciding to go out for drinks after the wake, they head to a bar and begin to open up about their lives. Seth (David Nackman), is Jewish and a former successful novelist who’s run into a series of not-so-successful flops. His family is also navigating the process of one of his children undergoing sexual transitioning.

          Seth is the most anxious of the three men, worrying about the success of his latest novel and its implications for his family’s financial viability.

          William, a successful African-American attorney, comes with all the visible trappings of success. He sports expensive suits and shoes and wears a Rolex watch, which he downplays as symptoms and possible indications that there’s something personal bothering him. One the other hand, he, like Seth, is awaiting the announcement of a career shaping event that will have a profound impact on his life.

          Javi (Enrique Bazán-Arias) is Latino and a former financial advisor, who left his career to become a stay-at-home Dad to let his wife, a surgeon that specializes on children, support the family financially. Alongside his rather carefree, light-hearted demeanor something heavy and morose seems to lurk beneath the surface.

          The men’s connections grow closer as they continue to meet and share one another’s crises, setbacks and victories. Over time, deeply buried and hurtful racial and ethnic experiences float to the surface, sometimes with explosive anger. Through rough and tumble moments, their connections survive and even provide support and succor.

Socrates once said the unexamined life is not worth living. In Three Blind Mice, the protagonists help one another explore and examine their lives and feelings through their stories that often provide insights into their lives they might otherwise miss.

The most dramatically heart felt moment of the play comes at the end when Seth walks up to the wall in back of the limited but evocative set to a series of seven photos. Behind one that shows a man’s face and him hiding his eyes behind a pair of clenched fists, Seth slides the photo from the frame, turns it around to the other side, then reinserts it into the frame. What we see next, coupled with Seth’s final movements and demeanor, takes your breath away with its powerful emotional impact.

The play is a much better than expected start for a fledgling playwright who penned a work worthy of future iterations. I hope Three Blind Mice makes it on to other stages across the country. It’s certainly deserving of subsequent productions.

Note: I got to speak briefly with director Art DeConciliis after the performance. I hadn’t met the established actor/director for years ever since I wrote an article for the Post-Gazette about his upcoming 100^th directorial assignment for Little Lake Theater near Canonsburg. As far as we could tell, that was 15 or more years ago. God, and probably also deConciliis, only knows how many plays he’s been in since. His latest venture, Three Blind Mice is yet another feather in his cap.