BWW Reviews: Crown City Revives A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER

In 1978, Thomas Babe's A Prayer for My Daughter impacted audiences who were living through the post-Vietnam syndrome. Casual use of drugs, crime and police brutality were rampant. We were in a state of moral decay. In retrospect, it has all gotten progressively worse. So, the intense drama is like holding a mirror up to nature as it'were in 2010, and Crown City Theatre has a surefire audience grabber.

Director Alarr has wisely staged the play against the right wall, with audience seats in the three-quarter, as the intensity in a New York police precinct office gets fiercely stronger and stronger as the action progresses. Being almost on top of it, I felt every blow all the more.

The four actors deliver astoundingly raw and full-out performances. Matthew J. Williamson has never been better as junkie, homophobic Det. Jack Delasante. In and out of violent mood swings, Williamson brings delicious humor to his quieter moments as he gloats over Norman Mailer's Prisoner of Sex. This male chauvinistic pig is a piece of work and Williamson holds nothing back. Gary Lamb is marvelous as sleazy Simon Cohn, the gay conman accused of murder. Lamb creates a complex three-dimensional character whose affectingly human stories of loving a Vietnam soldier make one question his lack of morality. Matthew Thompson is equally riveting as junkie Jimmy Rosehips who will carry off just about anything in playing the game to get what he wants. Young, but hardly innocent, Jimmy has sadly seen and done it all. Thompson is perplexing as he conveys the wonder of witnessing his child being born. These so-called criminals convey a sensibility so lacking in the authority at hand. Speaking of whom, then there's alcoholic Det. Francis Kelly who would rather verbally abuse these convicts than attend to an ailing suicidal daughter that he fails 'to understand'. Kevin Brief is terrifc as failure Kelly. How many fathers can relate to this asshole!

Delasante derisively sings "You Are My Sunshine" at various points throughout the play, and that song along with a token prayer at play's end cast a heavy cloud over our continually failing sense of duty to our fellow man and even worse to ourselves. We tend to take it all for granted, so Babe's prophetic play is a brutally realistic reminder.