Perhaps no one would agree more wholeheartedly with this statement than renowned teacher Annie Sullivan as depicted in The Miracle Worker, Joel Daavid’s production of William Gibson’s play now showing at the Matrix Theatre.

Wittgenstein’s words, perhaps achingly, best summarize what tenacious Sullivan tried to explain to the Kellers when she became their daughter’s teacher & tutor & took full responsibility for trying to bring infantile Helen back from her world of silence… from a world apparently beyond reach.

But let me start at the beginning.

Helen Keller’s miraculous & inspiring life needs very little introduction. I still remember vividly my first grade teacher trying to explain to all of us in the classroom that Helen had been the first person who attended live music concerts even though she was completely deaf simply because thru words she had ‘learned to listen to music’s vibrations’. I think the concept was a bit beyond my grasp at the time but I fully understand it now.

I was completely unaware however, of the less romantic parts of Helen’s life. Even less, of the ungodly struggles her teacher Annie Sullivan had to endure to actually get anywhere while tutoring Helen for the first few weeks. At the same time, Sullivan was attempting to make a breakthrough that would serve as indication that beyond appearances, there was some level of awareness behind the opaque gaze in Helen’s eyes –not to mention saving herself from dismissal from the Keller’s household altogether.

Precisely these somewhat un-glamorous details are what come to the forefront in playwright’s William Gibson’s, The Miracle Worker, wondrously brought back to the stage by Daavid with a superbly talented cast of actors and an enviably professional support team in sound, lighting & stage design. If all small plays in  LA were this meticulously produced and acted, this might be a theatre town instead of a movie town. But to the facts…

The Play…

First thing that strikes you about this production is both the professional level and intimacy of the scenery and the semi-circular shape of the Matrix Theatre stage -particularly well taken advantage of.

A lone light casts its beam on a small crib: a doctor and a married couple come into the stage. We’re witnessing Helen Keller’s first days of life in this world. It’s the 1880’s somewhere in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

Captain Arthur Keller and wife Kate, played respectively by Stuart W. Howard and Julie Austin Felder are soon thrown into the emotional turmoil that implies seeing their daughter fall deeper and deeper into ‘her world’. Both actors delved profoundly into their character and the peculiarities of the age lingos and accents and succeed in making the Kellers fully believable. Him, stern, patriarchal… and paternalistic, her, concerned, emotionally involved and... maternalistic.

Blinded by their love, the Kellers soon start patronizing their own daughter and fall into despair as the child seems completely out of theirs or anyone’s reach. There’s even talk of putting her in a ‘place for the mentally disabled’.

Enter Annie Sullivan, (ferociously characterized by Erin Christine Shaver- a first time teacher with basically zero teaching or tutoring experience and herself once a blind child at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. What will this ‘novice’ do?

She’s not sure and she makes no pretense: she doesn’t have an answer. .. But she’s got lots of intuitions and one of them is key to her success or failure: Language.

She insists: a child’s world is only as vast as their language, so meticulously, she begins teaching Helen in sign language the ‘felt’ shape of letters in the palm of Helen’s own hand. She submerges Helen’s hand in a pail of water, takes it out, she then spells the name out lout: Water, then letter by letter, w-a-t-e-r.

The description might make it sound simple… it is not and the task at hand is huge. Helen, deftly played by first timer Carlie Nettles, is not only deaf, blind and mute, she’s also obstinate & whimsical –or spoiled if you asked for Annie’s opinion- and won’t give in easily. As a side note, Nettles raw performance is certainly a highlight in this play.

Fights ensue between the tutor and the pupil. Literal fights. With fists, hair pulling, wrestling bouts and all. Eventually, all this resistance paves the way for the climax in the play… the moment of realization, the moment when the light of consciousness seems to for the first time penetrate the caves and labyrinths of Helen’s cerebrum. This moment so perfectly calibrated and juxtaposed against the daily grind of Helen’s life.

And the triumph of both director and playwright can be summarized as follows: at this climactic moment, the audience knows… the audience realizes that Helen realizes… and it’s not just awareness but awareness of awareness: consciousness, that elusive substance that conspires to make of all of us what we ultimately become.

The Miracle Worker, above all, is an anthem to determination and simple good-heartedness, qualities much in need in an era of Ponzi schemes and lavish corporate severance packages.

Penned by William Gibson in the mid 1950’s, The Miracle Worker is based on Annie Sullivan’s letters written while at the Keller’s household when she was in charge of Helen Keller’s tutorship. The letters tell of the hardships involved in her attempts to communicate with someone physically but not psychologically present.

This is also the first staging in LA of such memorable play after the passing away of writer William Gibson just last year.

“The Miracle Worker” now running through March 15, 2009, at The Matrix Theatre.  Performances are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday 8:00PM and Sunday 2:00PM.  

The Matrix Theatre is located at 7657 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, CA. 90046.

Tickets are $25.00 Thurs, Fri, & Sat. and $20.00 Sunday Matinee.  Running time is approximately 2½ hours with one intermission. Allow time for street parking.

For reservations, call (323) 960-7863 or to reserve online, go to:  www.plays411.com/miracleworker