Review: Hope Summer Repertory Theatre, "Children of a Lesser God"
(Photo: Erik Alberg)
What is it like to live in a world of silence? To rely on a language that few around you know? What is it like to defy those around you who only want to pity you rather than see you as a layered human being?
These are some of the questions explored in Mark Medoff’s “Children of a Lesser God.” James Leeds is the new speech teacher at an institute for the deaf where he meets and falls in love with Sarah Norman, a woman deaf from birth who refuses to learn to lip-read or speak.
It is the show wrapping up Hope Summer Repertory Theatre’s (HSRT) 49th season, one that had to be moved outdoors to meet Equity requirements. It is a demanding show, one that could never have been done with a masked cast as actors must read each other’s lips.
The lead actress role is played by Michelle Mary Schaefer who doubles as the director. A Deaf actress, this is her seventh time performing this show. Her direction demonstrates her clear familiarity with the show and there is a strong vision that every performer is on board with. She makes good use of the outdoor space, expanding beyond the stage and creating multiple-stage pictures to allow for seamless transitions between scenes.
She uses distance as a secondary stage language, telling stories of connection and disconnection throughout the story. Contributing to the show is Intimacy Director Alexis Black whose work inspires electricity between characters with currents that range from fully charged to fizzle.
Schaefer’s Sarah carries an aura of silence around her, one that is almost visible in its strength. In the beginning, she is always in control, cynical but empowered. She has a highly expressive physicality, not just in her signings, but in her facial expressions and the purposeful ways she moves either toward or away from people.
Jesse James Kamps’s James is Sarah’s counterpart, first her unsuccessful teacher and then her wooer. He acts as the guide for the audience, bringing them into the world of the Deaf and asking the questions that they need answered to fully understand the battles being fought. Kamps displays the teacher’s passion and his willingness to learn, even if he never budges from certain core beliefs.
James’ wooing of Sarah feels a little creepy today when modern audiences might challenge the relationship between teacher and student (and the speed at which it takes place) as abusive, or at best, inappropriate. But Kamps and Schaefer mostly convince the audience to set aside those concerns because of the chemistry they have with each other and the strength of the bond that they show.
The two other Deaf students, both who are called upon to represent a wide swathe of interests and personalities, are Orin Dennis, played by Lane Breimhorst, and Lydia, played by Amiee Chou. It is perhaps appropriate that Lydia is the only character given no last name because Medoff writes her mostly as a type, a stereotype. That said, Chou plays it fully, infusing the sex-starved school girl with unrelenting and inescapable energy and demand.
Breimhorst fleshes Orin out to make him more than just a resentful revolutionary. He signs pointedly, expressing his anger and his passion. Breimhorst embraces the role of catalyst and doesn’t try to make Orin more likable than he should be.
One of the accomplishments of all the actors is that they demonstrate to the audience how each person has a personality that is expressed through the way that they sign. Just as voices are unique, so is the language of signing and no two people do it exactly alike. James lacks the fluency of Sarah or Orin but he doesn’t have the stiffness of Mrs. Norman or Edna Klein.
Lighting Designer Katy Atwell had to wait until the sun went down before she was able to do her best work, but she made up for it in the second act with her dramatic spotlighting and lighting levels that helped to further the play’s emotional arc.
In a play about silence, you wouldn’t expect there to be much work for Sound Designer Tamir Eplan-Frankel, but you would be wrong. Whether providing the sounds of geese, crickets or James’ classical music, she filled the space with a variety of sounds. The outdoor sounds often blended so well, it was easy to think they were simply part of the natural environment of the theater and a few people were looking around to see where the waterfowl were.
Taking up the center of the stage was a screen that provided a translation of all the spoken dialogue so that Deaf members of the audience had an ongoing interpretation. For interpretation of signs, the audience had to rely on James and others, which sometimes meant they were intentionally left out of the conversation, something too often experienced by those who are Deaf.
The script is more than a little flawed, but it has endured because it succeeds in pulling people into the world of the Deaf and articulating some of the conflicts and issues that are important to that community. It invites people to open themselves to a new level of empathy, something HSRT has gotten very good at doing.