Move this to the General News if that makes more sense:
Review: ‘Children of a Lesser God’ @ BTF, 6/24/17 - Arts Talk
(The full review is subscriber only, but I managed to get it on my phone so, here it is: )
Review: "Children" portrayal is spellbinding
At Berkshire Theatre Group in Stockbridge
By Steve Barnes June 25, 2017
Lauren Ridloff is spellbinding as Sarah, the deaf woman at the center of the powerful and handsome new production of "Children of a Lesser God" that is launching at Berkshire Theatre Group this summer before a planned move to Broadway next spring.
While the marquee names attached to this version of Mark Medoff's 1979 drama may be acclaimed director Kenny Leon, who three years ago won a Tony Award for his revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," and TV actor Joshua Jackson ("The Affair," "Fringe," "Dawson's Creek") as Sarah's teacher and love interest, it is Ridloff who rightly deserves the most attention. Her Sarah is strong, independent, difficult at times; deaf since birth, she's forged a life on her own terms, refusing to learn to read lips, speak or otherwise make conventional adaptations expected of her to try to be "normal," as defined by the hearing world.
Although 26 when the play opens, Sarah is still at the residential school where she's been since childhood. She takes classes and is employed as a maid in the dorms, which allows her to work alone, with minimal communication required. Challenges, and promise, arrive in the form of Jackson as James, a hearing teacher, whose mission to teach Sarah to speak gets complicated when they fall in love and later marry. Sarah's safe, cocooned world is disrupted by her marriage and by a growing sense — raised in part by her longtime classmate and friend Orin (John McGinty, absolutely superb) — that the paternal, patronizing approach of the school is an insult to its students' autonomy and right to full, independent lives.
"I love you for having the strength to be yourself," James tells Sarah at the end of the first act. Whether he was being honest, with her and himself, becomes clearer later, when he accuses of her of being able to read lips but pretending not to out of obstinance, and of refusing to speak for the same reason. He says, "If you could stop seeing this speaking thing as a test of wills."
The drama of the second act builds in intensity, but its full emotional power is never realized because Jackson isn't completely convincing in his portrayal. He does yeoman's work as James, speaking an interpretation of nearly all of Sarah's sign language and signing throughout himself — there are also a pair of interpreters and a screen showing dialogue in front of one side of the stage — but we can't get a good bearing on James. The acting seems conflicted, not the character; James' mood changes feel dictated by the script, not the result of a rich, evolving mind, and even little matters prove bothersome for the audience, such as James' supposed fondness for classical music — as portrayed by Jackson, it's not believable.
Given the strength of the rest of the cast — including Kecia Lewis, formidable as Sarah's mother, and Tony winner Stephen Spinella as the headmaster — Jackson's difficulties create problems of rhythm and continuity. It's like watching a pas de sept with one dancer in Timberlands; he gets through it, albeit not with the grace of his fellow performers.
For all the masterfulness of Leon's staging, working on a gorgeous, abstract set by Derek McLane, under Mike Baldassari's impressive lighting, the production still feels incompletely worked out. References in the dialogue make the period seem the same as the original, in the late 1970s, but much of the incidental music is contemporary, for example. Further, Leon cast Ridloff, who is black, a fact that changes the texture of the central relationship, yet race is never mentioned nor acknowledged in any apparent way. Finally, the age of the plays shows. In terms of societal understanding of deafness, we're at a different place now than we were when "Children of a Lesser God" was written. Medoff's script is much more heavy-handed than "Tribes," by British playwright Nina Raines, which was staged last summer by Barrington Stage Company in a production that better explored the families and communities we're a part of, by birth and, later, voluntary association.
Audience reaction at the conclusion of Saturday's opening-night performance was rapturous. With work on the production and Jackson's performance, it could be deserved by the time the show gets to Broadway.
sbarnes@timesunion.com • 518-454-5489 • @Tablehopping •
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I hope there will be more reviews, I wonder if other critics found Josh the weak link.