Meet Fenton. He’s a psycho. A year or so back he was banged up for murdering a preppy teenage girl in one of America’s less-enlightened southern states. Enter a campaigning congressman, John Daniels, who hopes to teach Fenton to read and write and to help him make something of his ruined life. The opening of Richard Vergette’s play is intriguing enough but a savage twist is on its way.
Fenton rejects all the congressman’s overtures. Asked to recite the alphabet, he glares and grunts and spits out monosyllabic expletives. The only expressive medium for which he shows any talent is the flinging of furniture at high speed across the interrogation room. These chair-chucking episodes are interrupted by a Jesus-freak warder, who likes to barge in and use Fenton’s head for drum practice with his nightstick.
Congressman Daniels finally reaches the nub of Fenton’s problem: short sight.
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