I enjoyed this week’s selection. I would like to have the chance to see it on stage, if for no other reason than to hear the comedic lines. Those scenes with a little touch of comic relief, where we saw the real relationships between Troy, Bono and Rose were my favorite. Yes, some of the comments were a little ribald, but aside from that, their conversations reminded me of the days when I was a little girl and my dad would hang out with his buddies and joke with one another like that. I thought it was interesting that no matter how much they joked around, Bono was the one who knew Troy the most and he eventually called Troy out for his less-than-perfect behavior.
I always find it sad to read a story where the character has problems due to mistakes his or her parents made. Throughout the story, we see Cory and Troy struggle over the football issue, and it is not until halfway through that we realize that Troy is not only fighting his own personal demons of failure, but also those old sins-of-the-father. After leaving home, he succeeded on his own, and he expects Cory to do the same. He doesn’t want Cory to have a chance to try sports, either because he doesn’t want his son to do better, or because he is afraid he will be hurt. Either way, the pain of past hurts is too much for their relationship.
I was touched, but not surprised, by Rose’s decision to help raise Raynell. She was a kind-hearted, generous, giving woman, who would not over-look a needy child because of her husband’s transgressions. It is her gifts and strengths that made it so unseemly for Troy to have cheated on her in the first place. Personally, I thought it was selfish for Troy to have acted the way he did, and even more so for him to have blamed it on the need to “steal second”. He forgot that he was not the only person in his family, in his marriage. Many people, not just men, forget that fact. Marriage is not easy, Troy found that out- it is full of pressures and bills and all sorts of daily problems; Troy’s solution was not an easy fix, as he quickly found out. Whereas Rose felt the need for a fence, to pull her family closer in, Troy never could finish it, as he felt trapped by it, by family.
The end was my favorite- poor Gabriel, spent the whole story as a minor character, the mental incompetent who talked of heaven and his job as an angel. I was worried when his trumpet wouldn’t work, then overjoyed when he began to dance. As he began to sing, overjoyed that his brother was going to Heaven- his relatives go to embrace him, thinking he was delusional, but no, he pushes them back. His song, his dance- both are his call to St. Peter, and they work… the gates of heaven are opened “as wide as God’s closet”.
