By David Gordon, Managing Editor
She doesn’t utter a single word, but Abigail Breslin shakes the Circle in the Square Theatre to its core as the deaf and blind Helen Keller in Kate Whoriskey’s fine, if dramatically unsatisfying production of William Gibson’s “The Miracle Worker.”
Based on Keller’s autobiography “The Story of My Life,” Gibson’s play, which covers her life from birth to early childhood, is perhaps best known not for the play itself, but for the performances of Anne Bancroft and Patti Duke as Annie Sullivan and Helen, which, after being immortalized on screen, have taken on “legendary” status. Annie, sight-impaired herself, is brought into the Keller home as a last-ditch effort to try and teach Helen, rambunctious and language-less, a method of communication.
Helen is a physically demanding role, and Breslin acquits herself to the stage (her debut) with aplomb. She provides and is given ample support from the actors around her: Alison Pill as her teacher Annie Sullivan, Matthew Modine as Captain Keller and Jennifer Morrison as Mrs. Keller.
While she doesn’t top her best work, extraordinary turns Off-Broadway in David Harrower’s “Blackbird” and Neil LaBute’s “reasons to be pretty,” Pill more than certainly delivers the fiery, impassioned performance that audiences, especially those who have seen her on stage or screen (recently as activist Anne Kronenberg in “Milk”), have come to expect, though her dialect goes in and out.
Whoriskey’s production, staged in the round (with sets, designed by Derek McLane, that float in and out, ominously hanging above the playing space) lacks the dramatic inertia that makes some of the key scenes so powerful. It’s also quite hard to see facial expressions, especially Helen’s, when the actors have their backs turned to certain sections of the audience.
The premise of Douglas Carter-Beane’s “Mr. and Mrs. Fitch,” now at Second Stage Theater, is far more interesting than the execution. And it’s a shame, since the production, directed by Scott Elliot and starring the always wonderful John Lithgow and Jennifer Ehle as the titular couple, has so much going for it.
Mr. and Mrs. Fitch (that’s how they refer to each other) are gossip columnists for a New York tabloid. The well of good stories has dried up and a Macbeth-ian power struggle ensues as they vie to keep their job: she goads him into creating a character for their column. And wouldn’t you know it? Their prose is so exciting that, thanks to the internet, the character they create (a handsome celebrity bachelor) takes on a life of his own.
They live in a cluttered, split-level manse (beautifully rendered by set designer Alan Moyer). He is far older than she; their marriage is a distinctly non-sexual one (he needs Viagra to perform adequately). The most interesting plot point in the entire play is the fact that Mr. Fitch is either bisexual or (more-likely) gay. But that whole conceit is forgotten about rather quickly.
What Mr. and Mrs. Fitch (named after Cole Porter characters) do best are pithily quips to one another, a relentless stream of cultural references that make mention of anything and anyone you could possibly think of. They do the Charleston, swear on Susan Sontag’s “Against Interpretation” as if it were the Bible, make fun of the Bible, question where Anna Deveare Smith and Moises Kaufman get their theatrical inspiration, debate the name of Jan’s fake boyfriend on “The Brady Bunch,” and rake Twitter over the coals.
At first, it’s very funny, and as presented by Lithgow and Ehle, the characters are duly charming and disgusting. But they grow tiresome very quickly, when even the cultural elite lose track of what the Fitches are talking about.
Alison Pill as Annie Sullivan and Abigail Breslin as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker.” (Photo source Joan Marcus)