ASL shadowing illuminates the Coterie’s brisk, brilliantly acted Miracle Worker

Like many, I was first exposed to The Miracle Worker — William Gibson’s 1959 script about the deaf and blind Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan — in high school English class.

Poor, well-meaning Mrs. Bolhoefer insisted that we act it out in class. Which meant assigning a freshman to voice Helen’s grunts and cries. “Serious” and “respectful” are not adjectives I would use to describe what ensued.

My thanks to the Coterie Theatre for a better education. Its inventive, inclusive production — directed by Jeff Church and associate director Daria LeGrand — provides both a moving tribute to its subjects and an engrossing battle of wills for its two lead actors.

Josephine Pellow earns top honors for her nuanced, physically grueling performance as Helen. She combines the uninhibited energy and experimentation of a child with the dedication and maturity of a stage veteran. Better yet, she keeps a firm hold on Helen’s hair-trigger volatility, making each sharp turn — from playfulness to desperation, for instance — believable. While Helen’s family sees a “wild bear cub,” we see a shrewd manipulator peddling tantrums for pity.

Vanessa Severo has cunning to match as the indomitable Annie Sullivan, a woman with nothing but disdain for those who would rather treat Helen as a fragile egg than an ordinary child. I’ve written about Severo enough times that I long to abandon ceremony in favor of a check box on each review (“Still brilliant? Y/N”). Her performance here deserves the usual adjectives — precise, committed, fierce — but this time she’s also brassy, impatient, even cold. Annie’s ruthless pragmatism may have worked with Helen, but Severo shows us its high cost — to Annie and to those who would get close to her.

Among the supporting cast, Walter Coppage commands attention as the dour Captain Keller, and Jennifer Mays is the right kind of clueless as Helen’s doting mother, Kate. As Helen’s half-brother James, Tony Pulford seems at times anachronistically arch but he hits a more authentic note in later scenes with Severo.

The Coterie’s production is designed to appeal to diverse audiences, offering both American Sign Language interpretation and embedded descriptions of the physical action (drafted by the Coterie and read by the actors themselves) to help blind audience members follow along. Most of the ASL-interpreted productions I’ve attended have followed the same rough format: A lone interpreter, relegated to one side of the stage apron, signs by the dim glow of a music-stand light. The Coterie employs “shadow” interpretation instead: Here, interpreters share the stage with the actors, floating around behind them to ease sight lines and better track their subjects. The result is a busier but arguably more inclusive production. Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers can stay glued to the action instead of watching the wings.

Design elements are effective but spare, with David Kiehl’s abstract sounds a notable highlight. A disorienting stroke of a piano key or pluck of a single string offers us a glimpse into a world without rules or patterns to order it.

Church and the Coterie have pared Gibson’s script into a 75-minute race to the water pump. The cutting is largely successful, preserving the main plot arc while preventing younger audiences from fidgeting in the seats. But some subplots are muddled in the process, most notably the conflict between Captain Keller and his teenage son.

What remains are The Miracle Worker‘s universal themes: perseverance over pity, hope as the highest form of love. And the Coterie’s exhausting, grief-laced production has the power to provoke serious contemplation in even the crassest freshmen hearts. Mrs. Bolhoefer might have called that a miracle. I’d have to agree.