THE HISTORY of the American theater is dotted with oft-quoted
lines that sum up the mood or theme of famous plays. The
impact of William Gibson's 1959 The Miracle Worker can be
compressed into a word that emerges as "wah-wah."
The halting word signals the child Helen Keller's breakthrough
into knowledge. "She knows!" exclaims her teacher, Annie
Sullivan. What the not-yet-7 Helen knows is that the liquid spouting
from the family pump has a name - water - one of the words her
teacher had been patiently spelling out in her palm, using the
manual alphabet of the deaf-blind. In the Roundabout Theater
revival - which marks the 100th anniversary of the meeting
between Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan - the climactic scene
retains its emotional charge.
The Miracle Worker, which won Gibson a Tony Award, is a commercial play rather than the kind of classic we usually associate with the Roundabout; it aims to warm our hearts, not stimulate our intellects. When done well - as it is in Vivian Matalon's production - it does its warming work handily. But Gibson's dramaturgy hasn't held up well in other respects; like affliction-of-the-week TV dramas, the play resorts to slight characterizations and facile plot devices.
The revival draws strength from Karen Allen's accomplished performance as Annie Sullivan, who came to the Kellers' Alabama home as a 20-year-old governess and transformed the mute, deaf and blind Helen from an uncontrollable child into the person whose accomplishments won the world's admiration.
As Allen demonstrated in Monday After the Miracle, Gibson's sequel to The Miracle Worker - in which she portrayed the adult Helen opposite Jane Alexander's Annie - she is a lot more than the star of such popular movies as Raiders of the Lost Ark. She is an actress. Speaking in an Irish brogue and looking plain in a severe hairdo and tinted glasses - Annie Sullivan had regained her own sight after nine operations - Allen projects both Sullivan's no-nonsense determination and her tight emotional control.
The production also benefits from 10-year-old Eevin Hartsough's work as Helen. Apart from its physical demands, the role calls for her to emit inarticulate grunts, walk with outstretched, groping arms and convey the wildness of a child overindulged by her pitying family. She does it all skillfully.
The two actresses do full justice to the play's other celebrated scene - Helen and Annie's bruising dining-room battle. With a battle plan devised by fight coordinator B. H. Barry, the bout justifies Annie's victory bulletin: "The room's a wreck, but her napkin is folded."
Matalon has given the play a fluid staging, using Neil Peter Jampolis' good, skeletal set. Helen's loving mother is nicely played by Laurie Kennedy, and there is good work by Jack Ryland as Helen's petty-tyrant father and Victor Slezak as the son who finally finds the courage to stand up to him.
The secondary characters are in the play largely to demonstrate the folly of misplaced pity, and to hear Annie Sullivan deliver such maxims as "obedience without understanding is a blindness, too." What matters is Annie's bestowal of understanding on the seemingly hopeless Helen Keller. Allen expertly moves the play to its warming miracle.
Copyright © 1987 Newsday, Inc.