Blur

What did Melanie Marnich do with material for -- as well as the form of -- a novella or a cinematic scenario? Apparently, because she's a playwright, and a "hot" one at that, she made the play Blur . As such, it's got faults not entirely dismissed by attempts to be "quirky" or "original" but, happily for members and fans of FSU/Asolo Conservatory, it gives actors ample chance to show their stuff. In fact, they're riveting in the few scripted highlights, like showing the heroine's birth-through-to-teens as well as a zoo scene with her young adult friends like caged animals.

Mostly, though, the actors trump their material, about a girl in conflict with her mother and going blind, that soon settles into a coming-of-age story. As she loses her sight, she gains insight -- about herself, the friends she acquires, and the mother who's always tried to keep her too close but becomes so only when she lets go.

Within James Florek's stark set framed by pictures of Dot in different glasses against a backdrop of eye test prints, the dominant piece of "furniture" is a platform. It serves for such locales as a pier, a table in a center for the blind, a bed. Other sites come together comparatively clumsily, but placards, especially those that smirking and clumsy actors carry across the stage to denote changes of scene are silly. They seem to be a part of Director Barbara Redmond's attempt to give the play comedy that isn't intrinsic or even relief. It's as if the production is a vaudeville while the play is more of a sociological drama.

Dot is so turned off by her mother so early that her anger at finding it was mom, and not her long-gone father who passed on the genetic eye failure, seems diminished. But Sarash Gavitt deserves credit for the mother's unflagging anguish. She often merits as much sympathy as daughter Dot.

Kirstin Franklin keeps Dot interesting even when her adventures get boring. The friends she gathers as a family include Joey Joe D'Amico, unambitious zoo cage-cleaner, whom Peter Mendez makes genuine and lovably pathetic. Kevin Stanfa is silly as Father O. O'Hara who abandons his Catholic Church (a necessary ingredient in today's theater?) and, as Father O. O., starts a mission of his own. Done up in black leather and predictable chains, Alexandra Guyker's fuschia-haired dyke Francis gets away with disgusting sex -simulation before she settles into friendship and becomes likeable. She's the best of the bunch during a session where Dot discovers pot, as if everyone remained today in hippie mode. Ghafir Akbar brings dignity to the story of Dot's search for a modus vivendi as the doctor who treats her and supplies her with ever-stronger glasses. All the actors add up to a good enough reason to see the uneven Blur.