New comedy at Repertory

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 12

New comedy at Repertory

A new play” by Paul Zindel, “And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little,’’ will be produced for the Canterbury Repertory Theatre Society, by Brian Deavoll, in a seven-night season that will begin in the Repertory Theatre on Saturday. ■Jarring poignancies and abundantly funny lines distinguish the play,” was the comment of “Time” magazine on the opening of “Miss Reardon” early in 1971, in New York where it had a long run. The central characters are three sisters, Anna, Catherine and Ceil. All are teachers, but at different levels. The eldest, the ambitious Ceil, has become a superintendent of her area’s schools; Catherine, the middle sister, is an as-

sistant principal: while Anna, the youngest, is a simple rank-and-file teacher. Their differing positions account for only part of the ill-feeling between them. The main points of their antagonisms are personal rather than professional — stemming from the fact that Ceil stole Catherine’s sweetheart, and during this marriage, which was loveless and miserable, selfishly left to her sisters the burden of caring for their domineering mother during her fatal illness. The frayed family threads of this trio snap when the fey and vulnerable young Anna comes to the brink of a mental breakdown. She has been caught in a scandalous incident with a young male student in her classroom,

and is home on discreetly-referred-to “sick leave." She also develops a phobia about death, and will not tolerate the remains of animals around their apartment in the form of leather, fur or meat — reducing. Catherine to nibbling cooked beef secretly out of a chocolate box to vary' the vegetarian diet imposed on her. These problems cause Catherine to drink a little, and occasionally a lot. Ceil, determined that the alcoholic and sexual misbehaviour of her sisters will not embarrass her career, descends upon them, with commitment papers for Anna that she wants Catherine to sign. The recriminations of the sisters and the conflict over Anna's fate bring the play' to a strong climax.

Irene Macdonald plays Catherine, June Harvest is Ceil, and Toni Peters is Anna, the role played by Julie Harris in the Broadway production. Elody Rathgen plays Fleur Stein, a school guidance counsellor who offers to hush up Anna's misconduct in return for Cell’s influence in getting her a full teacher's certificate. Grant Edgar is her boorish husband. Sylvia Buckland is Mrs Pentramo, an obsequious neighbour, and Philip Mitchell is a brash delivery boy. Brian Deavoll directed Paul Zindel’s Pulitzer Prize winning play. “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Mangolds” in the Elmwood Players' production, which ran for an extended season in 1972.