KID PURPLE
This two-act play by Donald Wollner is about Benjamin Schwartz, who was born with a purple head. His upper-middle-class family expect Benjamin to become a lawyer, but because of his lack of brainpower and strange disability he gets sidetracked into a boxing career.
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This is certainly a workable premise for comedy. The class conflicts between Benjamin’s family and the boxing world have plenty of potential. The occasional parallels Wollner draws between Benjamin’s odd pigmentation and racial tensions lend themselves to both pain and laughter–which usually make for the best kind of comedy. But it seems that whenever Wollner was faced with a decision about direction, he chose to take the easiest road.
Yet when it comes to personifying Benjamin’s troubles, Wollner–through his character–projects all the anger squarely against Benjamin’s mother and absolutely forgives his father. Indeed, Benjamin wins the heavyweight title by pretending his opponent is his mother.
