In Robin Swicord’s “Criminal Minds,” a play currently running at Bakersfield College, two escaped jail “birdies” nest in their own private divot in an abandoned miniature golf course in Florida in wintertime, circa 1983. At the end of the play, it will be par for the course for the two guys and the girl who come along for the ride. The production is directed by Kimberly Chin.
Since “fortune has pee-peed” on them, as one of the main characters, Billie Marie, so succinctly puts it, the desperadoes, Eddie Ray, Renfroe and Eddie Ray’s girlfriend, Billie Marie, have to find cheap digs to hide out from the law, and they chance upon an abandoned miniature golf course.
Billie Marie is teed off with Eddie Ray for skipping out of prison just nine days before he is to be paroled, and apparently he did it just to keep tabs on the eccentric Renfroe, who has a short-term memory. Eddie Ray is planning a heist, and he is especially interested in using Renfroe’s unique way of processing information; Eddie Ray wants Renfroe to be the fall guy who gets arrested for the crime.
He says this to his girlfriend, Billie Marie, who does not seem to have any qualms about it. However, she thinks that Eddie Ray should just ditch Renfroe somewhere and not bother with using him for some scheme.
An interesting character and indispensable to the play, Billie Marie is evidently a trailer park casualty who yearns for bourgeois respectability. While waiting for Billy Ray to be paroled, she finishes secretarial school. However, Eddie Ray’s choices threaten her plans. The question the spectator should ask is this: Why does Billie Marie choose to stay with such a low-life creature such as Eddie Ray? The life of a fugitive obviously does not appeal to her, nor does Eddie Ray seem to have any redeeming characteristics. He is chauvinistic, lustful, cocky, conniving and rude, not to mention an unremorseful escaped felon planning further misdeeds.
Eddie Ray even tells Billie Marie that he is going to buy the two of them a house through a VA loan. Billie Marie finds out later that Eddie Ray is not eligible for any VA assistance because of a dishonorable discharge. Billie Marie stays with Eddie Ray despite this prodigious deception.
The question is never really answered why she stays with him. The question is left open to viewer interpretation, which might be the right thing for the playwright to do. Perhaps the reason why Billie Marie stays with this reprehensible creature is because of the zesty tang of being around a daring man. However, the novelty has evidently worn off for Billie Marie, who mumbles and shrugs through most of the production when she is not deploying barbs at Eddie Ray.
The viewer assumes perhaps that Billie Marie and Eddie Ray are two of a kind. However, despite her frequent use of poor grammar, Billie Marie does not come across as quite the low-life that Eddie Ray is. Toward the end of the play, Billie Marie seems almost protective of Renfroe, who has a tendency to fall in love with her and then forget that he fell in love with her, and then falls in love with her again.
Throughout the play, it becomes clear to the viewer that the male actors have some grasp on the characters’ motivations for their behaviors. Dashawn Anton Robbert Clark shows that Eddie Ray wants to elude capture, get rich quick and use Renfroe to achieve the purpose of getting rich.
Andrew Hupp effectively shows that Renfroe does not know what is going on; all that he is periodically cognizant of is the fact that he is in love with Billie Marie.
Fortunately, not once did any of the actors grope or fumble for dialogue. Clark conveys the appropriate air of urgency and is effectively ominous and desperate with his booming voice and his fierce facial expression enhanced by his huge eyes. However, at times he perhaps exaggerates Eddie Ray’s bad-ass posture; Clark sometimes almost comes across as a stereotype.
Katie Goehring’s performance as Billie Marie misses some depth and breadth of character interpretation. Just from the character’s androgynous-sounding name alone the viewer gleans that the character should combine strength and resilience tempered by compassion. However, the actor comes across like a pouty, exasperated teenage Barbie doll. Furthermore, she frequently mumbles her lines without much conviction.
At times, Andrew Hupp as Renfroe exaggerates the fact that he is an actor in touch with his inner child rather than showing the audience Renfroe and what makes Renfroe tick.
Of course, the character’s short-term memory disability should lend the character a somewhat helpless, childish air, but Hupp sometimes overdoes it.
Nevertheless, one good choice Hupp as the actor makes is to leave it to audience interpretation whether or not Renfroe is truly suffering from short-term memory loss; somehow Renfroe has the presence of mind to gain the upper hand in the end.
The playwright intended to create some uncertainty as to whether or not Renfroe truly has the disability; Renfroe could be the true “criminal mind” in the play, the playwright insinuates.