Today is the one-year anniversary of the skiing accident that killed Natasha Richardson. Please keep Natasha, Liam and the boys in your prayers.

No One As Irish As Barack O'Bama

This is such a hoot! Check it out. http://www.oneeyedparrot.org/obama.html 

The Miracle Worker

A more representative name for this production would be simply Worker because little sense of The Miracle is apparent in this first Broadway revival of William Gibson's 1959 play about Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan. Prime responsibility for this failure lies with the director, Kate Whoriskey, who creates a busy, noisy first act and an anticlimactic second. What a disappointment.

I had really been looking forward to this revival for a number of reasons. I love the 1962 movie starring Patty Duke and Anne Bancroft. I’ve been impressed by Alison Pill’s work on and off Broadway, as well as in the film “Milk.” I thought she would make a strong Annie. I also was curious to see Abigail Breslin in her Broadway debut as Helen, a blind and deaf child in 1880s Alabama so different from the charming cutie she played in the movie “Little Miss Sunshine.” I wanted to see how she handled the challenge of live theatre in such a physically demanding role.

Unfortunately neither actress lived up to my expectations, although I think they could with better direction. Breslin needs to push to a deeper level, to manifest the profound rage Helen feels trapped in a world in which she can’t understand or communicate. Breslin’s Helen is merely a petulant child. She seems comfortable on stage, which is an accomplishment in itself for a newcomer, and she has a handle on the physical aspects of Helen’s anger, but she comes off as more spoiled little girl than a desperate soul trapped in a world of silence and darkness.

An essential element to the story is the relationship between Helen and Annie, but I never felt a strong bond. Pill is more a stubborn woman doing a job than a teacher driven to unlock Helen’s mind. She goes through the motions, repeatedly spelling out words in Helen’s hand, tackling her to the floor when necessary, but I didn’t feel the passion in the relationship. The director should have discerned this missing ingredient.

She also should have brought the volume down a good bit. Throughout the first act the actors shout at each other. Yes, it’s stressful having a daughter like Helen, but anger and frustration can best be expressed with only occasionally raised voices, not with nearly every sentence at top pitch. The worst offender of this is Matthew Modine, making his Broadway debut as Captain Keller.

The actors don’t just shout, they also move around so much that the stage takes on an almost Grand Central Station swirl. All this noise and busyness signaled many in the audience that they were watching a comedy. This was most screechingly inappropriate in the dining room scene, where Annie has dismissed the family and is locked in alone with Helen to teach her how to sit at the table and eat properly. It’s harrowing in the movie to watch the battle of those two wills, with Helen throwing spoon after spoon, hurling food and plates across the room. The audience perceived this as if watching a teen movie about a food fight in the cafeteria. It’s a grueling scene, not a comic one, but hilarious laughter rang out. It was disturbing to hear.

They laughed again at the poignant exchange between Captain Keller and Annie when he asks her, “Do you like the child?” and she replies: “Do you.” It’s as if Helen is the comic bad girl, not an intelligent human being trapped in disabilities.

Had Whoriskey set a different tone by sharpening her actors’ performances, this wouldn’t have happened. I expected more from her too, having been deeply moved by her staging of Ruined last year.

Another problem is Derek McLane’s set. It’s difficult to design for a theatre-in-the-round like Circle in the Square, so maybe the space is more to blame, but I missed a great deal because my view was blocked by a door frame that signifies the transition from inside to out. Even when scenery wasn’t in the way, the nature of theatre-in-the-round being what it is, actors often had their backs to me. I was shut out of the crucial scene of Helen’s breakthrough, when she finally understands that the movements Annie has been making on her hand spell words, and those words have meaning. Breslin faced away from me so I couldn’t see the revelation that should have transformed her. Circle in the Square is one of my favorite Broadway theatres, but this show would have been better off somewhere else.

The one element of the story that does come off well is Jennifer Morrison’s portrayal of Mrs. Keller. She captures the conflict of a mother torn between the desire to cuddle and spoil her child and the desire to help her learn to communicate. This is her Broadway debut and she should be proud of it.

As should members of the creative team. Paul Tazewell’s Victorian costumes are lovely and Kenneth Posner’s lighting is effective. For the most part, Lee Sher has done a good job with the physical coaching and movement. Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen create original music and sound designer.

The original 1959 Broadway production starred Bancroft as Annie and Duke as Helen. It won six Tony Awards, including Best Play in 1960. They repeated their work for the film version, each winning an Academy Award. I made the mistake of pulling my copy of the movie off the shelf over the weekend and watching it. That certainly contributed to my displeasure with the Broadway revival. Duke expressed Helen’s fury so fully, and the intense relationship between Helen and Annie is portrayed beautifully by Duke and Bancroft.

Duke later played Annie in a TV film of the work, with Melissa Gilbert as Helen. A theatrical sequel, Monday After the Miracle, also by Gibson, showed Helen and Annie as adults. Gibson died in 2008.

Keller died in 1968 at 80. While the play stops with her childhood discovery of words and their meaning, her learning did not. She went on to Radcliffe College, becoming the first blind and deaf student to graduate from a major university. While there, she wrote her first book, The Story of My Life, an account of her childhood on which The Miracle Worker is based. She went on to write another 11 books.

An activist for many causes, she was a close friend of Mark Twain, who is the one who dubbed Sullivan “a miracle worker.” She was an early suffragette, campaigning for women's rights and becoming a champion for birth control when such a position was considered scandalous. 

She spoke out for the rights of working people and, God love her, was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Her friendship with Sullivan continued. When Sullivan got married, Helen lived with her and her husband. The two women traveled extensively, visiting nearly 40 countries. Sullivan died in 1936 at 60.

Tickets for the 50th anniversary production of The Miracle Worker are available by calling Telecharge at (212) 239-6200, visiting www.telecharge.com or from the Circle in the Square Theatre, 235 W. 50 St. For additional information, visit MiracleWorkeronBroadway.

“O God, I love Thee -- not out of hope of heaven for me, nor fearing not to love and be in the everlasting burning. Thou, my Jesus, after me didst reach Thine arms out dying -- for my sake suffered nails and lance, mocked and marred countenance, sorrows passing number, sweat and care and cumber, yea and death, and this for me -- and Thou couldst see me sinning. Then I, why should I not love Thee Jesu, so much in love with me? Not for heaven’s sake, not to be out of hell by loving Thee, not for any gains I see, but just the way that Thou didst me I do love and will love Thee. What must I love Thee, Lord, for then? For being my king and God. Amen”
-- Gerard Manley Hopkins

Candida

The life force, such an important element in a George Bernard Shaw play, is missing in the Irish Repertory Theatre's dull revival of Candida, which opened last night under the direction of Tony Walton. I felt I was at an early rehearsal rather than a full production.

Walton, who also designed the set and costumes, sat in front of me, laughing repeatedly. My reaction was quite the opposite. I had to fight to stay awake in the overheated theatre, and did nod off a couple of times in the dry, talky first act.

Ciaran O'Reilly, as the middle-aged clergyman James Morell, gives the strongest performance as a happily married man assured of his beliefs and his place in the world. The play, though, should belong to his wife, Candida (Melissa Errico), but I didn’t feel Errico hit her stride until the final scene when she has to choose between her husband and Eugene Marchbanks (Sam Underwood), the awkward young poet who is enamored of her. Given Underwood’s over-the-top performance, you will have no trouble guessing her choice, even if you don’t know the play.

I also felt Brian Murray (in photo with Errico), as Candida’s father, was a bit uncertain of his lines, especially at the beginning. Xanthe Elbrick as Morrell's secretary and Josh Grisetti as his curate are serviceable.

Walton makes excellent use of that tiny Irish Rep stage, creating an ornate Victorian parlor rich in details. We got to tell him how much we liked it during the intermission when we had fled to the sidewalk to get some cool air. He said his method is to crowd in as much as possible, which would seem an unlikely approach to working with such a small space, but which works beautifully. I just wish he had given as much attention to his actors so they could shine as well.

Candida continues through April 18 at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd St. Tickets are available by calling (212) 727-2737 or online at www.irishrep.org.

Jim Brochu at the National Arts Club

Growing up in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, Jim Brochu thought his Lady of Angels parish was the center of the universe and from it he would achieve greatness.

“I knew I was born to be the first Brooklyn-born pope,” he said yesterday, speaking to our Dutch Treat Club luncheon group at the National Arts Club. Instead of playing ball with the other children, he liked to pretend he was at the podium at St. Peter’s in Rome dispensing blessings to the crowds.

That early dream has partly come true. Brochu is dispensing blessings nightly, but not in Rome and not as pope. He performs his sacred duties Off-Broadway at the DR2 Theatre where he stars in Zero Hour, the award-winning one-man play he wrote in tribute to the late actor Zero Mostel.

Brochu says he’s living proof against F. Scott Fitzgerald’s notion that there are no second acts in American life. “Here I am, an Irish Catholic playing Zero Mostel.”

His Irish charm was on full display as he filled the dining room with stories of his life in show business. He was 13 in 1959 when the lure of the theatre hit him. His father, a Wall Street bond trader, had a business friend named Ed Zimmermann who gave young Jim and his father house seats to a show his daughter, Ethel, was in. That was, of course, the one and only Ethel Merman, who took Jim onstage after the show so he could gaze out from that perspective on the darkened theatre. Suddenly the thought of Pope Brochu vanished from his mind.

“I have never had a religious experience in any church like I had in the theatre,” he said. “That day my life changed forever. I knew my church from that day on would be the theatre.”

Ethel was the first of the greats he got to know. He would go on to watch his father in a spontaneous sing-along with Judy Garland one night at Jilly’s, later he introduced his father, who had lost his wife when Jim was 3, to Joan Crawford, with whom his father had an affair for three years. While selling orange drink -- his first job in the theatre -- he met Tammy Grimes, who just happens to be one of our Dutch Treat Club members and who was sitting at the table in front of him yesterday, a nice moment of coming full circle.

And, also at 13, he was wowed by Zero Mostel in A Funny Thin Happened on the Way to the Forum. “I could feel myself go back in my seat like someone had stepped on an accelerator.” He went backstage to meet Mostel, who became his “godfather and mentor.”

In time, Brochu took the plunge into acting, in one case it was a literal plunge. Appearing in his second show, an Israeli revue called To Be, or Not to Be, What Kind of Question Is That?, in what he calls “the worst show ever,” he tripped and fell center stage, smashing his head so hard he “saw stars.” In his review the next day, Clive Barnes wrote that you’ve all heard of a play within a play. “Last night we witnessed a flop within a flop.”

Brochu did go on to win approval. The New York Times has hailed him as a “Man of the Theatre” and he keeps in his dressing room a signed photo of Mostel inscribed “To Jim, with my admiration.” He created Zero Hour as his way of saying “To Zero, with my admiration.”

Originally scheduled for a 12-week run at the Theatre at St. Clement’s, Zero Hour has been so well received by both critics -- this one included -- and audiences that it has now moved to the DR2 Theatre for an open-end run, and talk is mounting about a move to Broadway. The show has been blessing people in unexpected way. Brochu, like Mostel, is also an artist. Each night on stage he paints a picture and those works have been sold or auctioned, with the money going to the soup kitchen at St. Clement’s and to the Actors Fund.

What a delightful man. I was glad to have the chance to tell him after his talk how much I enjoyed Zero Hour. I do hope it moves to Broadway. It deserves to be there.

As always, our afternoon had began with a musical performance. Our very own Mark Nadler, a superstar in the New York cabaret world, treated us to a selection from “Beyond Words,” his new show of the work of Ira Gershwin that he’ll be premiering at the Algonquin starting Tuesday, costarring with our DTC president and cabaret darling, KT Sullivan. Mark was joined onstage by another DTCer, composer Jon Weber, who popped up from his table, as he is apt to do, to pump up the action. For the next 12 minutes their four hands leapfrogged across that one keyboard for a rousing Concerto in F, with the two men switching seats or jumping up to tackle the music standing or stooping over the keys. Brilliant!

Another Tuesday, another engaging lunch at the National Arts Club. As we who belong always say, it’s the membership that makes the Dutch Treat Club so special. But the entertainment sure ain’t bad either.

Common Ground: Learn about some of the charities "Today show" news anchor Ann Curry reports on

This follow up by Celeste McCauley appeared in Guideposts online newsletter.

In her cover story An Act of Faith, "Today" show news anchor and Dateline NBC anchor Ann Curry talks about reporting from some of the world's most dangerous places to shed light on injustice and give voice to the voiceless.

"Journalism is about changing the world, isn't it?" she said. "It's about giving people the truth so that they can change the world. The world is evolving, I believe, into a more compassionate place."

Ann exuded a calmness that contrasted with the stories she was telling about the injustices she witnessed in Sudan, Congo and Serbia. Yet despite the troubles in the world, she remains hopeful.

"My travels have convinced me that no human being is really foreign to another. We have so much in common. The truth is, we are surrounded by our sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, each life precious. It is time for us to stand up against the suffering caused by genocide, war and ignorance. If we care enough about our human family, we can change the future."
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A postscript to Guideposts’ story: Twenty-four hours after they finalized the piece with Ann, Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake. The very next day Ann was reporting live from Haiti—again on her quest to help others through her reporting. Again putting her beliefs into action—just like she talks about in their story.

Check out Ann's suggestions for ways to help the people she reports on.  "If you can't give money, donate your time and volunteer," she says.

International Rescue Committee  
Provides relief, respect and renewal to refugees and victims of armed conflict around the world.

Save the Children  
Creates lasting change for children in need in the United States and around the world.

Mercy Corps  
Turns crisis into opportunity for families in some of the world's toughest places.

Doctors Without Borders  
Medical humanitarian organization assisting people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe.

Ann writes on her Twitter page that "journalism is an act of faith in the future." Follow her posts at www.twitter.com/anncurry.