Both Emily and Annie were extremely polished in this production. Emily gave a star performance. This reviewer has several decades of experience working with children with severe special needs and Emily was entirely convincing as she portrayed Helen’s frustrations and tantrums. Although Emily’s role had no verbal script she maintained her mannerisms throughout.
Annie, Irish and feisty, showed her determination to help Helen despite setbacks. For such a potentially tragic story, her script was laced with dry humour, which Rosie delivered exquisitely.
Although the relationship between Helen and Annie was the key to the story, the Keller family were not bystanders. Rob Keeves, gave his best performance to date as Captain Keller, a southern gentleman, almost by definition staid and inflexible. Yet when confronted by powerful women, including his wife [Catherine Prout] and sister [Abigail Drennan], he was weak, humorously portraying his timidity. They maintained their excellent accents through the performance.
Set designer Hattie Human cleverly created three distinct spaces in the Attic’s relatively small performance space representing different parts of the Keller house – a sitting room flanked by a slightly elevated bedroom on one side and a garden and summer house on the other. This allowed director Andy Woolley to have several parallel scenes running simultaneously. As the family dined and bickered in the house, and tensions rose, in the garden and summer house Annie relentlessly taught Helen. It was very moving as Helen learned to spell out words using a simple ‘finger spelling’ sign language.
It is a credit to Andy’s direction that the numerous scenes of Helen’s tantrums, reflecting her frustration as Annie tried to get her cooperation, were almost worthy of needing a fight coordinator such was the intensity of Emily’s and Rosie’s actions and reactions.
The play ended at just the right point as Annie was able to demonstrate to her family that Helen had made progress. All the cast performed strongly to deliver a moving story of hope.
Tickets from The Miracle Worker at The Attic Theatre event tickets from TicketSource