Critic’s Pick
Sarge is a one-woman show written by Cincinnati-based actor, writer and director Kevin Crowley featuring Christine Dye. In three short vignettes, Crowley imagines the life of Dottie Sandusky, aka “Sarge,” the wife of Penn State’s assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky around the time he was indicted for multiple counts of child molestation.
In a powerhouse performance, Dye lays bare Crowley’s version of Sarge. We learn how she earned her nickname early on, as it is the foundation for her self-deception. Both she and her husband have a deep commitment to cleanliness and order, which ultimately allows her to rationalize Jerry’s showers with boys, even outside of the locker room.
Sarge’s conversations — with a neighbor who stops by (before they all stop coming by), with a police officer who responds when a brick is thrown through her window and in the courtroom — reveal all the facts of the story. She understands that Jerry loves boys; that the Second Chance Club for boys started after he picked up a young hitchhiker and returned him home, being gone for an entire night. She understands that he showers with them even on vacation and tries to play Santa to these lost boys who won’t come out of their rooms on Christmas. Yet Sarge’s need for this all to be normal elevates these gestures into proof of Jerry’s moral goodness.
Dye is riveting throughout this emotionally layered 50-minute exploration of the power of denial. She tells the jurors “If what you say is true, then I didn’t live with and love this man for 40 years.” For Crowley’s Dottie Sandusky, the truth annihilates her very existence. Dye’s complex and earnest performance makes you feel deeply for Sarge, a woman many feel is complicit in child abuse.
SARGE by Clifton Performance Theatre (Cincinnati) will be performed 5 p.m. May 31, 7:15 p.m. June 2, 7:15 p.m. June 4 and 7 p.m. June 6 at Art Academy Auditorium (1212 Jackson St., Over-the-Rhine).
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2014.