From left to right: Elizabeth Keith and Jeanne M. Adams. Photo credit: Hart Wood. Courtesy of Silver Spring Stage
Silver Spring Stage's production of the 1971 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is filled with gorgeous details and sensory experience, but it consistently softens the darkness inherent to the play's meaning and power. At its center is Beatrice, played by Elizabeth Keith, the damaged and dangerous mother of two young women. But Keith underplays her viciousness and unpredictability. Paul Zindel's Marigolds is horrific by intent: filled with macabre body horror, cruelty, and abuse — it deserves to have that darkness given credit.
From left to right: Asha-Ashanti Nzinga Turner, Irene Denniston, Elizabeth Keith, Daphne Wheeler, and Jeanne M. Adams. Photo credit: Hart Wood. Courtesy of Silver Spring Stage
Decay, Disorder, and Danger
The layered and lavishly decorated set in Silver Spring Stage's gorgeous black box theater is pure pleasure to visually explore. From the desk and old-fashioned electronics situated around the pillar that sits between the two wings of the audience to the varied boxes on top of the refrigerator to the dark wooden bannister, the house in which the play's entire action takes place feels like a portal to another time, more real than theatrical. I spent considerable time luxuriating in the details, but I did start to wonder: is it too tidy? It looked more like a place I'd love to spend a weekend than a home in disarray.
The action of the play revolves around Beatrice (Elizabeth Keith), her two daughters Ruth (Irene Denniston) and Tillie (Daphne Wheeler), and in an important non-speaking role, their elderly boarder, Nanny (Jeanne Adams). Beatrice is a role of a lifetime: both a considerable challenge for an actor and an opportunity to incandesce at the center of the story. Keith grounds her Beatrice in an appealing plausibility that frequently feels at odds with her lines. Her interpretation presents a woman who seems hurt and flawed, but is still holding it together as a member of regular society. Unfortunately, the explosion never really arrives.
Wheeler's Tillie is appealingly vulnerable and optimistic. Specific gestures, like nervously grabbing the pleats of her skirt or turning her arms and face into her body as she takes in a fresh hurt, present an achingly plausible child who only knows how to process things inwardly. Her resilient joy in her scientific research represents the core hope of the play, and Wheeler's longing and hopeful expressions in the midst of the turmoil of her home were poignant and effective.
Denniston's Ruth displays some of the chaos energy that is too muted in Keith's performance, and her precision with both timing and changing moods makes her the most powerful force on stage. Her eruption into the home while recounting the news about Tillie's making the science fair finals is particularly joyful and affecting.
The costumes, by Stephenie Yee, have the same problem that the set does: they're beautiful and period-specific, but look too nice. Tillie is, according to the play, publicly humiliated at school. The Tillie in the production was in no danger of such mockery: her clothes and hair looked beautiful.
Asha-Ashanti Nzinga Turner. Photo credit: Hart Wood. Courtesy of Silver Spring Stage
The Blackbox Grit
Asha-Ashanti Turner has a small but appealing turn delivering a monologue as a rival finalist in the science fair, playing a girl whose experiment involved skeletonizing a dead cat. The grisly details of that act are an important part of the play, and the ghoulishness of her chipper, laugh-ready delivery might have been aided by more attention to prop acting.
The moment later in the play where Beatrice pushes Ruth felt choreographed and weak. Safety is a fundamental requirement of anything that takes place on stage, but once that has been assured, impact is the second highest priority. Instead of providing an essential point of combustion, it felt listless.
The production makes a strange choice regarding Nanny: in her second appearance, she suddenly shakes off her seeming infirmity and moves with alacrity to get herself a beer. It was the first big laugh of the evening — but it raised questions the script doesn't answer. It felt like a funny moment added at the expense of the whole.
I would contrast it to a moment near the end of the play when this production inserts a kind of simulation of an atomic bomb, with a siren and non-verbal engagement from every member of the cast. It brought shivers down my arms. It felt like a way of expressing, in an abstract but sensorily intense way, the weight of potential annihilation that both the characters in the play and we ourselves inherit.
From left to right: Elizabeth Keith and Irene Denniston. Photo credit: Hart Wood. Courtesy of Silver Spring Stage
This was my first introduction to The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, and it made me a fan. But the play is deliberately horrific — I'd put it next to something like Veronica's Room on my shelf. Downplaying the horror diminishes the purpose and triumph of the possible redemption in Tillie's insight into the cosmic nature of human existence.
The Details
The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a production by Silver Spring Stage at its black box theatre at 10145 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20901. Written by Paul Zindel. Directed by Cora Dubberly. Running time is 90 minutes, with an intermission.