The Los Angeles Times Friday, December 17, 1999 Home Edition Section: Calendar Page: F-39 Theater Beat

'Miracle' Holds Up With Strength and Clarity By: PHILIP BRANDES By today's compact narrative standards, "The Miracle Worker," William Gibson's 1959 drama, suffers from its share of creaking structural joints. Nevertheless, it still packs an emotional wallop in a gripping revival from Pasadena's Knightsbridge Theatre. Powerfully affirming the life-changing importance of communication, Gibson's play recounts the factually based story of blind and deaf Helen Keller's rescue from isolation by her gifted, unconventional tutor, Annie Sullivan (Amanda Karr, who also directed).

Sullivan was no stranger to solitude. Blind herself before a sight-restoring operation and raised in an orphanage for the disabled, she exudes both sympathy and tough-minded realism in Karr's assured performance. Bucking the authority of her charge's well-meaning but too-indulgent parents (Robert Craig, Alyss Henderson), Karr's Annie recognizes that taming the child's unruly temper is not her primary challenge. Rather, the real task is getting Helen to make the symbolic connection between words and things--the entree into the world of ideas that hearing and sighted people take for granted. The torturous relationship between Annie and Helen on the path to that breakthrough is affectingly depicted, despite the script's melodramatic flourishes. While the substitution of understudy Erin Brittney Green for Anna C. Peloso as Helen may have somewhat altered the dynamics in the reviewed performance, Karr's staging reflects an inherently sound underlying sensitivity to the theme of communication, also reflected in the conflict between Keller's domineering father and her older brother (Geoffrey Hillback). Amid sparse sets augmented with strikingly effective audio collages, the slow-building momentum justifies itself with a powerhouse finale. •"The Miracle Worker," Knightsbridge Theatre, 35 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; dark Christmas day and Jan. 1. Ends Jan. 16. $18. (626) 440-0821. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes. PHOTO: Anna C. Peloso plays Helen Keller, and Alyss Henderson is her mother in "The Miracle Worker."