THE MIRACLE WORKER

Tuesday, 3rd November
Bunkamura, Shibuya

I caught a performance of William Goldman’s THE MIRACLE WORKER (奇跡の人) on Tuesday. Apparently everybody knows this but me, but it’s a biographical account of the childhood of Helen Keller, who became blind and deaf at a very young age.

Although everything in the play revolves around her, the main character is her governess and mentor, Anne Sullivan. She teaches the blind and deaf Keller how to communicate, finally connecting her to a world that had written her off as an incomprensible animal. Anne Sullivan is the eponymous miracle worker, played here by Anne Suzuki (pictured above).

She’s best known to western audiences from the strangely great HANA AND ALICE, the pretty bad RETURNER, and the brake screechingly bad INITIAL D.

For me to properly introduce this most recent Japanese take on the play, we should take a look at probably the most widely known version of the play – the 1962 Hollywood film, featuring the original stage actors. In this scene Annie has finally got her wish, to be sequestered alone with Helen at home. As well-meaning as her parents might be, they are ultimately a bad influence, for they have no faith that Helen can learn and aspire to anything more than a pet. The things Helen has learnt take some serious unlearning. Here, Annie tries to teach Helen the simplest of civilised tasks – sitting still at the table and eating with a spoon, rather than running around and inhaling from your hands. It turns out to be a physical tour de force -

While that scene’s got intensity to spare, almost to comical excess, I wouldn’t say it was trying to be funny. This version was, at turns, an intentional comedy! Helen’s behaviour is sometimes given a slapstick quality and played for laughs. Sometimes I wonder, given what she and her family went through, if this doesn’t border on disrespect. I suppose as tough as it was there must’ve been some light in the dark, and the production doesn’t pull any emotional punches where it counts.

As for the biggest emotional punch in the climax, the one that elicited sobs from every woman in the audience … the play took a little too much time getting there. There was too much before it and not enough after it. Helen seems to realise all in the same instant what language actually is, its utility, and that her mentor and parents were forcing it on her out of love. That’s a lot to take in even for a the audience, let alone a young child who has perhaps for the first time made any sense of her world.

The play pretty much ends at this point, and I couldn’t help but want to know more about what became of Helen as an adult. Anyone who knows as shamefully little as I do about Helen Keller may be left feeling the same. Perhaps when the play was first performed, she was famous enough that it was common knowledge, which would explain the “and the rest was history” feel of the ending.

But this was nothing that this latest staging of the play could’ve changed, and anyway these are small nitpicks on what was generally a great time. The acting was uniformly terrific, although not being much of a theater-goer I was a little thrown by how theatrical it was. Everyone seemed to move and speak with an energy that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Disney animation. If finances allow, I’d love to see more plays like this, and I’m sorry that finances probably won’t allow me to see the performance of TWELVE ANGRY MEN at Bunkamura next month.

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