Review by M.T. Bennett, Front Row Reviewers
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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a Pulitzer Prize Winning play by Paul Zindel, written in the 1960s. As a collaborative effort Immigrant’s Daughter and Hart Theater Company share this story with us at Lightree Studio in Salt Lake City. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is a transformative work that will leave you realizing you’ve experienced a play that will invite you to look at your own life in an impossibly unique way.
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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is like the short stories you are forced to read in 7th grade that leave you slightly traumatized. Beautiful, dark, sad, yet hopeful. It follows the struggling and explosive Hunsdorfer family, which comprises of the insecure, beaten down narcissistic mother Beatrice (played by Producer and Costume Designer Ariana Farber), the mentally unstable older sister with questionable morals, Ruth (Jamie Greenburg) and the quirky but earnest Tillie (Heidi Farber).
This impoverished family is ruled by Beatrice, the broken, controlling matriarch who has suffered numerous misfortunes in life and is now barely holding herself together, let alone her family. Beatrice’s father is dead, her husband has abandoned her and her children, and her life amounts to “zero”. Living with the Hunsdorfers is elderly Nanny (Vicki Pugmire) who Beatrice describes as a “walking corpse”. Nanny’s daughter pays the the Hunsdorfers $50 a week to take care of her. Though a non-speaking role, Pugmire embodies the frailty of Nanny’s condition, which contrasts with Beatrice’s abusive and belittling behaviors toward her.
Tillie is full of dreams and resilient to the ridicule she gets from home and schoolmates. H. Farber plays her in such a sweet and pitiful way that one’s heart breaks as she patiently endures all the abuse she suffers. H. Farber’s Tillie is complete–she brings her character hope, pluckiness, and a groundedness we all hope to have one day.
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I am sure A. Farber is a lovely person in real life, but her portrayal of a despicable, washed-up, mean failure is so convincing, if I were to see this wonderful actress on the street, I would be terrified, unable to divorce the actor from the character. You want to hate Beatrice but also can’t help but pity her. It is gut-wrenching. I saw her character as a sort of cautionary tale for what we all can become as adults. Life beats you down and no one has all their dreams come true. If we aren’t careful, we can let that failure consume us and poison any other chance we have of success or joy.
H. Farber’s Tillie plays the perfect juxtaposition to A. Farber’s Beatrice. While Beatrice is bitter and consumed by the paltry life she has, Tillie is full of wonder and focused on the universe and eternity. The play opens with a beautiful, impactful monologue. Tillie’s recorded voice melds with H. Farber’s spoken words: “He told me to look at my hand, for a part of it came from a star that exploded too long ago to imagine. This part of me was formed from a tongue of fire that screamed through the heavens until there was our sun. And this part of me — this tiny part of me — was on the sun when it itself exploded and whirled in a great storm until the planets came to be.” H. Farber shines. She excellently shows Tillie’s courage, her hope, her embracing of all that is fragile and realizing who she is in the world.
Ainslie Shepherd as Janice, another contestant in the science fair only appears briefly near the end of the play, but she evokes laughs and gasps from the audience in her portrayal of a psychopathic teenager who boiled the skin off a cat and rearranged the skeleton for her project.
The final member of the all-female cast is none other than a live rabbit who fills a tragic role of its own in the story.
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Stage Manager and Props Designer Liz Black, as well as Scenic Designer Allen Smith should be commended for their creative design with the set as a whole. Entering the theater, we are invited onto the stage with 18 seats set up almost right in the stage’s living room set. This use of space serves to pull audience members into the story and make the tension that builds through the play all the more palpable. The stage’s bottom level is the facade of an ordered yet dingy living room. Wood pallet walls and newspaper clippings on the windows, horizontal lines and everything in its place. As your eyes move to the second level, it becomes incredibly chaotic. Like an explosion frozen in time. Windows are crooked, broken boards are askew as if flung out. The calm horizontal lines of the lower living room are ripped asunder as a subtle visual representation of this family’s life exploding apart in the background of an otherwise normal home.
Lighting Designer and Sound Tech Kyle Esposito perfected his craft at evoking emotions at appropriate times. I jumped when lightning flashed and the house lost electricity. A sickly green light contrasted Beatrice’s darker moments against the warm natural lighting of Tillie’s hopeful nature. The music serves this contrast as well as Beatrice’s crashing moments have discordant radioactive sounding music versus Tillie’s ethereal background harmonies.
Costume Designer A. Farber dresses Tillie in typical 1960’s school girl style of uniform sweater and a plaid skirt. Ruby’s subtle rebelliousness is shown by her wearing the plaid skirt, but ditches the jacket with a sweater of her own. Beatrice character undergoes the most costume changes with the use of quick and simple costume pieces added or removed to show her current activities and moods.
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Director Morag Shepherd assembled a phenomenal team in the cast and production. The show made me laugh out loud, gasp in terror, and was filled with tragic tension wrenching my heart throughout. Everything in the production shines and provokes emotion and introspection.
Greenburg as Tillie’s older sister Ruth brings another aspect of chaos. She frightens the audience when she wakes from a nightmare and when she has a nervous breakdown. Greenburg deftly depicts the light fickleness of sibling love in her relationship with Tillie. One moment she denies being related, and the next proclaiming, “She’s my sister!” Greenburg brings Ruth’s fragility and volatility with enough believability that I was stunned.
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Director Shepherd’s insightful direction inspires and facilitates the actors with the ability to give the audience this message by exquisitely embracing their characters. They show this push and pull, like protons and electrons in Tillie’s beloved atoms, contrasts the fact that life can be tragic, and all-consuming but we have the stuff of stars within us. All our everyday mortal problems that cause us such pain are ultimately meaningless and powerless when examined through the lens of eternity. We are left to ponder this as ethereal music ends the play.
Even after the applause I just sat there, pondering about this poetically tragic yet ultimately hopeful message.; the feeling one has after a painful massage. The masseuse kneads muscle knots, and it can hurt, but in the end, everything is relaxed and calm. The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is emotionally painful but at the end all the knots are worked out and you are left with peace, calm, and a sense of wonder. A cathartic experience to be sure. Like the Marigolds exposed to cobalt-60 will we be the ones who grow normally, mutate beautifully, or die shriveled and small. The world is full of wonders and The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is certainly one of them.
Immigrant’s Daughter and Hart Theater Company presents The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigold, written by Paul Zindel.
Lightree Studio, 740 W 1700 S Suite 5, Salt Lake City, UT 84104
July 11-14, 18-21 (7:30 pm except Sunday shows at 4:00)
Tickets: Adult $26.21, Senior & Student $20.97
Contact Info: harttheaterco@gmail.com
Hart Theater Company Facebook Page
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