Biographical drama is a tricky enterprise. When a biography centers on a pivotal moment in a life, ( End of the Rainbow, The Mountaintop, Amadeus) it's perhaps most effective. But when the approach to that life is a chapter-by-chapter memory play, as with Carson Kreitzer's frustratingly didactic Behind the Eye, receiving an equally frustrating production by Gas & Electric Arts, the result - despite nudity and R-rated language - can feel an awful lot like a lecture.
Lee Miller, the play's subject, was a fascinating character with more than a few pivotal moments upon which to hang a narrative. Aside from her career as a fashion model and, literally, the face of some of artist Man Ray's best-known images, she was a muse and icon of the surrealist movement. But her accomplishments before the camera paled beside her own World War II combat photography, much of it retaining a surrealist aesthetic. Unfortunately, Miller's estate didn't authorize use of these pictures - perhaps because her son Antony reserved them for his own Miller bio-drama, The Angel and the Fiend.
