Comments (1) Best Supporting Actress - 2010

Miriam Wiener, In a Dark, Dark House, The Mosaic Theatre

Adolescents aren't what they show you in the movies. They aren't trendy girls full of self-confidence or dour baby-faced sages, scuffing their feet and dispensing unspoilt Rousseauist wisdom. Actually, they are painfully dishonest, profoundly uncomfortable little weasels completely preoccupied with proving to the rest of us that they're more worldly than they are. Wiener's performance captured this completely. Playing a 16-year-old girl who was in the process of being seduced by a much older man who, as it happened, had been molested by her father as a child, she play-acted at being coy — and the deeper she went over her head, the more her very innocence seemed pornographic. By the end of her one long scene, watching her share the stage with her seducer was almost too much to bear.