 | | 07-05-2017, 05:12 PM |
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#14
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Extreme Fan
Joined: May 2002
Posts: 2,580
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I fly all day Friday (as in two days from now) and then see the play on Saturday, have another day of relaxing (and going to see Spider-man), and then fly home all day on Monday. I spent a lot on the BnB so I am really looking forward to my custom breakfasts and ice creams socials and huge soaking tub, heh.
This link for the Boston Globe worked for me and now it doesn't. But here are some excerpts so we have them in the thread.
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Directed by Kenny Leon, “Children of a Lesser God’’ stars Joshua Jackson, of “Dawson’s Creek’’ once upon a time and now of Showtime’s “The Affair,’’ along with someone you’ve probably never heard of, the remarkable Lauren Ridloff. The production is reportedly aiming for Broadway.
No one can accuse Jackson of coasting through an easy stage gig during his TV hiatus. Shorn of the beard he wears to play ultra-serious Cole Lockhart on “The Affair,’’ the actor is indefatigable in shouldering the multiple demands of portraying therapist James Leeds.
Jackson is onstage virtually every minute, because the play, which begins in the mid-1990s, unfolds in James’s mind as he flashes back to his days working at a state school for the deaf in the 1970s. It was there that he met and fell in love with Sarah Norman, a rebellious dropout working at the school as a maid. Sarah, portrayed by Ridloff, is so determined to live on her own terms that she defies James’s efforts to get her to try to speak, even after they are married.
The real revelation of this production is Ridloff, a former Miss Deaf America and sign-language model. Director Leon originally hired her as his ASL teacher while preparing for “Children of a Lesser God.’’ After noticing “how the world looked at her’’ when their lessons took place in public, he has said, he decided to cast Ridloff opposite Jackson.
It was an inspired move, because Ridloff has that indefinable-but-invaluable quality known as presence. Her Sarah is a silent storm. Luminous and expressive of face and fingers, Ridloff’s Sarah needs no spoken words to get across her emotions or her point of view. But when Ridloff does speak near the play’s end, in an outpouring by Sarah that amounts to a furious declaration of independence from all the expectations the hearing world has imposed on her, it is shattering.
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There’s a structural problem built into the play: Jackson’s James doesn’t just speak and sign his own dialogue; he also interprets and verbalizes what Ridloff’s Sarah is signing to him. So, for example, when Sarah signs the words “But you’re pitying me,’’ James says: “But I’m pitying you?’’ In terms of sheer memorization, this is an exceptional feat on Jackson’s part, but when repeated over and over, the effect is to drain momentum.
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