THE MIRACLE WORKER A REVUE

I am one of the few people that never thought that William Gibson's 1959 drama THE MIRACLE WORKER was a great play, but the flaws it had [mostly in play construction] were more or less covered over by a classic final scene, memorable performances by Anne Bancroft, young Patty Duke and an amazing cast,and stunning direction by Arthur Penn.

The relationship of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan [the teacher who taught Ms. Keller to communicate in the real world] is one of the worlds' most inspiring stories and does not need rehashing here, but this first Broadway revival is misconceived, underdirected, and somewhat blandly acted.

The big [and I think fatal] mistake was doing it in the round with the spectators surrounding the stage. This presented a huge and maybe unsolvable problem for a director. How do you engage an audience in something that requires constant eye contact with the actors? Director Kate Whoriskey [who did a superb job with the play "Ruined" last year] hasn't been able to solve that problem so the actors spend part of the evening with their back to the audience. At todays prices that is not a good deal.

To be honest, the final scene [where teacher finally breaks thru to student] still packs an emotional punch and the two leads, Allison Pill and young Abigail Breslin give good, and sometimes fine accounts of themselves and the rest of the cast is o-k if not great,but being good is not enough to hide the fact that 50 years later THE MIRACLE WORKER is a flawed and sometimes dull play.

At THE CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE THEATRE 1633 BROADWAY N.Y.C.