After
last season’s exhilarating
production of William Gibson’s
The
Miracle Worker at
New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, the current Broadway revival, staged
in the
round at Circle in the Square comes
as a decided letdown…as I think it might even if comparisons were not
invoked.
The
play—which originally debuted on television as an installment of Playhouse
90,
before being transformed into a
stage
play and later a film, all three incarnations featuring the same stars,
a young
Anne Bancroft and a younger Patty Duke (Astin)—is set in the 1880s; and
it’s about Helen Keller's first teacher, Anne
Sullivan (Allison Pill), and events leading up to the
breakthrough in which, due to Annie’s
labors, the blind, deaf Helen (Abigail Breslin) finally connected the words of tactile
sign
language patterns with their practical meanings
To
the director Kate Whoriskey’s
credit,
her revival has a credible energy for a contemporary audience, which is
vital
for a play that has the potential to creak along like an old
stock-and-amateur warhorse.
What it doesn’t haver, though, is consistent coherence. Some early
scenic
transitions are a bit of a challenge to fathom, even if you know the
play,
partly due to soft diction, partly due to mild performance choices; and
while
few “in the round” stagings ever favor every audience angle equally,
hers
maddeningly distances the good portion of viewers positioned in front
of two
practical doors (entrances to the Keller household), angled and
positioned
diagonally opposite each other at perimeter points of the oval. The
doors, like
the frameworks that contain them, are themselves only articulated
frames—there are no panels, so you can see through them—but the
thick wood framing is heavy enough to be both a distraction and a
challenge to
the sight-line. Happily, they disappear into hidden traps for long
periods of
time, but you dread their return, and they’re utterly unnecessary.
Once
the play gets rolling, the performances sharpen and gel somewhat, but
then
you’re aware of a disparity of casting. Ms. Breslin is fine as Helen—a
role which requires emotional coherence in a role that consists of
pantomime
and non-verbal vocalizations—and if Ms. Pill isn’t an ideally
charismatic
Annie, her feistiness nonetheless wins the audience. Matthew Modine, though, is lackluster as “The
Captain”—as
they call Mr. Keller, Helen’s ramrod father. And as James, the
near-grown son
from a previous marriage whom the captain consistently browbeats, Tobias
Segal
is just gratingly whiny without
nuance or the comedic skill needed to shade a character that exists in
a
persistent state of self-pity. Other roles are performed competently
only, with
the exception of Jennifer Morrison (best
known as Dr. Cameron on TV’s House, M.D.), a welcomely
natural
presence in the role of Helen’s mother.
The
built-in advantage The Miracle Worker has
is a kind of power that makes itself manifest even in certain
less-than-optimum
circumstances. It just tells one of those stories that tug at the heartstrings and celebrate
the good
in humanity. And this production is able enough to let that power take
its
rightful hold.
But
to quote one of the best bits of direction I ever got—it was from Des
McAnuff, about a song I’d written—“It’s good, it moves you. The problem
is, it should kill you.” And
that’s pretty
much the case here. We’re moved.
But
unlike Helen, we are not transformed…
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