The Miracle Worker

"The Miracle Worker" is a play about the work of Annie Sullivan with her student, Helen Keller. When I first saw it was playing in the holiday season, I thought the theatre might have run out of slots the rest of the year and just stuck it here. But seeing the show, it is ideal for this time of year: it's the story of human beings persisting in love, of never giving up on each other. This is a deeply affecting show.

Helen Keller is, you might remember, the woman who was both deaf and blind, but who nevertheless went on to become an international voice of wisdom and determination. Her ability to reach outside of herself is owed to her teacher, Annie Sullivan, who refused to let the child disappear into the waste of society's rejects.

"She'll live up to just what you demand of her, and nothing more," said Sullivan, from whom Keller learned everything the seeing and hearing world learns from infancy: the names for the things and people around us, the shape of her environment, and how we are each connected. "You can see 5,000 years back in the light of words," she said.

As Sullivan, Val Landrum is brisk, forthright, powerful, every inch the fierce Irish woman of history. "The only time I have trouble is when I'm right -- is it my fault it happens so often?" Agatha Olson is positively stunning as Keller, a girl whose development has been left to chance. Olson's performance is utterly impressive and compelling, conveying the intellect and curiosity that convinced Sullivan to keep pushing. These two are the binary stars of this universe, forming an alliance that transcended the individual, or even the family.

I was a Helen Keller fan girl as a child, reading everything I could get my hands on about her. This production looks exactly as I had expected the world of Helen Keller to look. The set is dressed in tones of tan and brown, all shadow and sepia, as if everything in her memory has dimmed. It's built in six levels, a nightmare for any person visually impaired, presenting further challenge for Keller's navigation of her world. In the downstage corner, the functioning pump sits waiting for its Moment.

The costuming is beautiful and purposeful. The feathers on Keller's disapproving aunt's hats tremble like her indignation. Pockets were placed precisely to show off body language conveying a character's skepticism.

Helen's teacher is the nominal focus of the play, the one who worked a miracle, and her perseverance is at the heart of that miracle. She would not give up on her charge and simply discard her to whatever fate held for her. She saw Helen's brightness shining in that deep darkness, and knocked and knocked until she found the door to open to shine Helen out into the world.

Landrum's Sullivan's Irish is subtle, part of how she engages with the world, not an overlay on her character. Well done. She reminded me of Irish women in my life: tough, stubborn, incredibly intelligent. All Sullivan saw was a sliver, a tiny ray of light, and that was all that was necessary for her to believe fiercely in the person in front of her. As Mrs. Keller, Amy Newman conveys the terror and passion a mother feels when she sees her child falling away from her into darkness.

"We don't just keep our children safe, they keep us safe," says Don Alder, as Captain Keller, the blustery man whose traditional means of controlling the world simply do not work on his daughter, or, frankly, anyone. Trapped as they are in gender and societal norms, the Kellers had their own battles to fight to get to the point of helping Helen fight hers. But just like Sullivan, Mrs. Keller never, ever, ever gave up.

In this post-Americans with Disabilities Act world, in which the cage cultural expectations of disability has been unlocked by societal shifts and technological advancements, it's hard to fathom just what a miracle this was. But what Sullivan did reached beyond that child: she unleashed on the world a force of great will and compassion, a person whose life had such magnitude and reach that she affected millions of people with her work. She went on to strive on behalf of people locked in their own prisons of oppression, particularly people of color.

Keller became a power unto herself, a torrent carrying along with her the fortunes of generations, affecting people to this day. The ACLU, the group she helped to found, continues to stand for those who cannot speak for themselves, a powerful testament to the woman who could not see or hear or, for much of her life, speak at all.

This miracle, like almost every good given to the world, was one for all of us, one we can and should continue to share. It is the recognition that in each person lays the potential for greatness, given the right conditions and assistance. Sullivan saw this, in spite of her own visual impairment, brilliant and clear in Keller, and worked like a terrier to release it.

Her miracle, then, is beyond just helping a blind and deaf girl to see and hear: it is the very doggedness with which she pursued her task, the stubborn determination that she surely passed along to Keller, who went into the world on her own terms and with her own vision of change for the world. The ripple of that one former-outcast touching the life of another outcast went on to change the entire world for good.

The story is a vivid reminder of what happens when you never, ever, ever give up, particularly on a child.

Happily, the run of The Miracle Worker has been extended through January 10, so you will have a chance to see this powerful production. But bring a box of tissues, and be ready to pass it around. The ovation at the finish was spontaneous and well earned. The story -- and this production -- will remind you of the radiant good in this world.

"The Miracle Worker" runs through Jan. 17, 2016 at Artists Repertory Theatre, 1515 SW Morrison St. Portland, OR 9720. For tickets and information, call 503-241-1278 or visit https://www.artistsrep.org/onstage/2015-16-season/the-miracle-worker