There’s a reason Sam Shepard’s Eyes for Consuela isn’t
performed that often. It has all of Shepard’s favorite
things—knives, liquor, maudlin conversations, cheap hotel rooms,
masculine competition, and mourning for women lost and found—but
not the brooding, barely sublimated electricity of Shepard’s
best
work.
Henry (Richard Carmen) is a sad American who turns his back on a
smoldering wreck of a marriage and heads south to a small Mexican
village to think things over. Amado (Gavin Cummins) is a sad Mexican on
a long, vicious mission for his wife—she wants a bouquet of blue
eyes, gouged from the skulls of foreigners. Henry and Amado meet at
machete-point, they retire to Henry’s apartment to drink tequila and
talk about themselves and their women troubles, and Amado might or
might not cut out Henry’s eyes in the morning. Mostly, it’s a long
bro-down between two guys who don’t like each other very much.
The potential tension between the two men—is somebody going to
die?—is undercut by a series of absurdities: Henry’s eyes aren’t
blue, but Amado somehow magically can’t see that; Henry and Amado spend
a lot of time together for two people who don’t get along; Henry just
hangs out in the hotel room while Amado sleeps. If he doesn’t care
about his eyes enough to sneak away, why should we? All could be
forgiven if the men’s revelations were, you know, revelatory. But they
aren’t. Henry and Amado are just two caricatures, one cold and rational
and northern, the other fiery and superstitious and southern. (Shepard
adapted Eyes for Consuela from a short story by Octavio
Paz.)
Even if Eyes for Consuela had the power of Shepard’s better
plays, this production couldn’t evoke it. Director Susanna Burney has
mounted strong, resonant work in the past—most recently Three
Hotels for the same theater company—but couldn’t find the
spark between Amado and Henry. The men don’t crackle, they just crinkle
against each other like cellophane. Likewise, Cummins, as Amado, is a
capable actor performing at the middle of his powers. Carmen, as Henry,
makes his stage debut. His career in indie film (Zoo, etc.) has
not prepared him to sustain a strong stage presence. But he has fans.
Carmen owns a bar in Marysville, called the Home Plate, and around 30
of his most loyal patrons rented a bus and came to the show. They
whooped and hollered and chanted his name during the curtain call.
“We’re all friends of Richard here,” a tall, blond woman said as she
smoked outside the theater during intermission. “Richard is a good
man.” 
