Miracle Worker a pearl of a production

HAYLEY Carr and Aviva Armour-Ostroff play Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan in Western Canada Theatre’s production of The Miracle Worker. The show continues until March 6 at Sagebrush Theatre.

Triumphs of the human spirit, the birth of the struggle for self-determination for disabled people and an iconic tale dramatically retold.

Could there be a more potent formula for inspiration than The Miracle Worker, the classic story of young Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan?

Western Canada Theatre’s remount of William Gibson’s 1960 play — part of a 50-year revival of the Broadway premiere — opened at Sagebrush Theatre Thursday night and was warmly embraced by its audience.

This is an old, familiar story, one of 19th-century hardship, given fresh meaning by a polished cast and a tightly directed delivery. It’s a pearl of a production that comes to Kamloops through WCT’s new artistic director, Jeremy Tow, who directed the show two years ago when he was with Chemainus Theatre Festival on the Island.

Hayley Carr as Helen and Aviva Armour-Ostroff as Annie give powerful performances in challenging roles.

A ragged, Victorian china doll — unable to communicate beyond wild tantrums — Carr is remarkably realistic in her portrayal of a child boxed into her own world by deafness and blindness. Her empty gaze, her helpless detachment cry out for compassion, but all her family can do is offer pity and affection.

Annie, having overcome severe challenges in her own life, is a tower of strength in comparison. She needs that and more to persuade the Keller family to let her literally wrestle control of Helen. Without her stubborn determination, Helen would have met the same fate as Annie’s brother, dying of neglect in a poor house.

“What good will your pity do her when you’re lying under the strawberries?” Annie says in an ongoing feud with Capt. Keller (Garry Davey), Helen’s father.

“You are a tyrant, Miss Sullivan,” he declares.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” she fires back.

Yet throughout she balances the plays’ underlying anxiety with well-timed humour, bringing much-needed comic relief. The family’s tug-of-war provides a dramatic struggle that parallels a stormy teacher-student relationship.

Thursday’s audience was so moved by some of the more stirring moments that they punctuated the scene changes with applause. They gave Carr and Armour-Ostroff a well-deserved standing ovation at show’s end.

This play brings to mind some of the other classics WCT has presented — Waiting for Godot or My Fair Lady, for example — in which there was a guiding reverence for the playwright’s original vision. The difference, of course, is that The Miracle Worker is based on a true story, a story that has not lost relevance despite a century or more of social progress.

While the second act seems clipped and the ending abrupt, the drama never drags, a testament to Gibson’s skill in adapting saga to stage.

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