Brutal Imagination

By Richard Zoglin

This unusual off-Broadway theater piece explores the case of Susan Smith, the South Carolina mother who drowned her children by letting her car roll into a lake, then lied to police that the kids had been abducted by a black man. Joe Morton, playing the imagined culprit, and Sally Murphy, as Smith, alternately recap news reports on the crime and give voice to Eady's poetic riffs on race and stereotyping. It's sober, well-intentioned evening (with evocative music by Diedre Murray) that, unfortunately, gives short shrift to the most intriguing questions about the crime (like why Smith did it) and fails to engage us dramatically.

--By Richard Zoglin