JELLY BELLY
at Blind Parrot
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According to Jelly’s code of conduct, murder is a moral imperative when one’s honor is at stake. The play takes place on the day he is released from jail–after serving six months for killing his brother-in-law. “I didn’t want to kill the dude,” Jelly admits. “I used to like him. He was my boy. But he never should’ve called the police on me. I told him not to come back, but he came back anyway. So I blew his mutherfuckin’ brains out, turned on the television, called the police, and told them to come and get his body.”
As soon as he gets out of jail, Jelly pays a visit to Mike, who used to be one of his followers. In fact, Mike may have beaten a man to death with a brick while under the influence of some angel dust supplied by Jelly. But Mike has started to straighten his life out. He has a job as a construction worker, and he and his friend Kenny dream of starting their own construction business. Their ethical system changed drastically while Jelly was in jail, but now Jelly is on Mike’s front porch, challenging him.
In a program note the playwright says Jelly Belly is based on a man he met in 1982 who had “calmly and openly admitted to murdering several people.” After each conviction this man spent no more than six months in jail. But what shocked Smith most was the system of values this man espoused–a system that seemed to exist on a perfectly solid foundation. “I understood that Jelly Belly was no more an aberration than I was,” Smith writes. As Wallace Shawn recognized, the difference between a saint and a monster is just a few thoughts, and thoughts are notoriously capricious.
This movie is supposed to be a spoof of mythology, and there are traces of humor in it. Good and Evil compete at creating the world. Good creates wheat, Evil creates locusts; Good creates pizza, Evil creates anchovies. But this silent, grainy, black-and-white film is so utterly inept that the characters–who wear banners identifying themselves as “Laughter,” “Pity,” “Wisdom,” and so on–look like a bunch of high school sophomores goofing around with a Super-8 movie camera.
