The Miracle Worker

Two seasons ago, an unknown author named William Gibson, an unknown actress named Anne Bancroft, a television producer named Fred Coe and a director named Arthur Penn reached Broadway with a two-character play, Two for the Seesaw. It was such a solid hit that it is still running today. This team's second effort, The Miracle Worker, came to the Wilbur Theatre in Boston Tuesday night. It is a gripping, magnificently performed piece of stagecraft, and it should have no difficulty in duplicating and surpassing the success of Seesaw.

The Miracle Worker tells in remarkably unmawkish fashion the story of the childhood of Helen Keller. Miss Keller, left blind and deaf in infancy by a near-fatal illness, is deservedly one of the marvels of our age, a woman who despite her handicaps has "seen" and done more than many dream of. The "miracle worker" who awakened young Helen Keller to the world around her, who taught her to "talk," to "see," and to "hear" was Annie Sullivan, a Boston Irish girl, once blind herself.

After several brief, effective expository scenes, Gibson's play traces Annie's struggles with her pupil up to the crucial point where young Helen, standing at a pump outside the Kellers' Alabama homestead, realizes that the W-A-T-E-R which Annie is spelling out in her hand means something and that that something is the water flowing over her arms. With this discovery of language, Annie's job has both ended and just begun; from this first world "water" Miss Keller built and understood a world.

The Miracle Worker is reminiscent of another play about a famous recovery from handicap, Dore Schary's Sunrise at Campobello. Both have the advantage of a ready-made, well-known story, of ready-made audience sympathy. But Gibson's task is a far more demanding one: while Schary could work with the breezy personality of the adult F.D.R., Gibson has as his heroine a six-year-old girl who cannot speak a word. There is, of course, the wonderful Annie, beautifully played by Miss Bancroft, but Helen remains the central figure, an unusual and tremendously difficult character.

Gibson is extraordinarily lucky to have the assistance of Penn as director and of Patty Duke in the role of Helen. Since Helen cannot speak, her every movement must convey something to the audience; Helen cannot be played as a mere dumb animal, for the entire play is meant to prove that there is something inside her, waiting to be released. Under Penn's direction, Miss Duke is more than a success in this awfully taxing part; without ever uttering a word, she is the most memorable child actress to appear in years.

Every scene between Helen and Annie is electric in its excitement; for ten minutes in the second act, the audience sits fascinated as Annie teaches Helen to fold her napkin and to eat with a spoon; not a word is spoken. The performances of Miss Bancroft and Miss Duke so stand out that they obscure several other important assets. First, Gibson's play is astoundingly free of the oversentimentality that could so easily bog down an enterprise of this kind. Second, the rest of the cast, particularly Patricia Neal as Helen's mother and James Congdon as her half-brother, is very fine. Certain minor defects are also obscured: Torin Thatcher, as Helen's father, is rather rough and overly blustery; both the second and final curtains could use a little tightening.

But these are, admittedly, quibbles. The Miracle Worker is a beautiful production, in every way worthy of its remarkable subject. It should not be missed.