To See or Not to See: Children of a Lesser God

There is a moment, in this revival, where one of the main characters describes deafness as a “silence filled with sound.” The struggle for a hearing person to understand that sentiment (and thus understand the person who expressed it) is at the heart of Children of a Lesser God.

James Leeds (Joshua Jackson) is the new professor at a boarding school for hearing-impaired students. His job is to teach them how to read lips and speak. Orin (John McGinty) and Lydia (Treshelle Edmond) are two pupils who excel with him so Mr. Franklin (Anthony Edwards), the headmaster, presents James a daunting task. James must try and teach Sarah Norman (Lauren Ridloff), deaf since birth and in her mid-20s now, lip reading and speech. She has spent her whole life refusing to do so. Having lived at the school since the age of five, Sarah is incredibly intelligent but spends her days as a maid on campus.

Within the power play between James and Sarah (which is representative of the problematic stance of believing that being deaf is a deficiency), there are two major subplots happening. One is the romance that blossoms between James and Sarah which leads to their marriage. The other is a lawsuit that Orin brings against the school; the school has no deaf teachers and Orin is on a crusade to change that—and he wants Sarah to help him.

First debuted in 1980 on stage and then in 1986 as a film, Children of a Lesser God, does have some themes in it that are not quite up to par with today’s society. Gender roles, in this, are a bit problematic. While it is evidence of the original time period the play was written in, the fact that Sarah is excited to become a housewife is both frustrating and eye-opening. She is clearly very intelligent and could have ambitions beyond housewife yet something like cooking and cleaning for her husband seems to excite her in its normalcy. She’s spent most her life defiantly individualistically, but with her marriage, is willing to bend to fit in. Another layer to the male-female dynamics (which is emphasized even more because Sarah is deaf) is James’s constant talking for Sarah. Despite his love for her strength of character, he is always translating for Sarah and using his own interpretation of what she is saying.

Joshua Jackson and Lauren Ridloff in Children of a Lesser God

However, the main themes of communication and identity are incredibly moving, thanks to the two leads. American Sign Language, just as with spoken foreign languages, has different meanings and different ways of conveying certain words and phrases; Ridloff, as Sarah, proves that time and time again. That is evident not just when ASL gets translated on stage by hearing actors, but also for audience members reading the subtitles projected above the stage. Compared to the written text, the words in ASL seem fluid and beautiful, particularly in the hands of Ridloff. She is able to convey how much Sarah’s identity is intertwined with her deafness by her stance, her facial expressions, and the way in which she signs. Her use of body language also speaks volumes more than any spoken word could when she communicates with Joshua Jackson as James and with Kecia Lewis, who plays Sarah’s mother. Her past shame at being deaf has turned into a steely resolve and it is electric. Ridloff is, in a word, superb.

Joshua Jackson is solid. He is assured and charming as James. He brings James’s vulnerabilities to the forefront (past his unconscious superiority as a hearing man helping the non-hearing people around him thus ignoring how being deaf shapes and informs their identities). Additionally, he’s also translating all of the ASL to speech for the audience. Thus, Jackson is basically on stage and speaking almost the entire two hours and twenty minutes. He shoulders a lot in this production.

So, while there are some clunky parts of Children of a Lesser God, where updating it could have had some benefits, the play will still make you re-consider the ways in which you think about communication and connection. And, that takeaway is one that will last a lifetime.

Children of a Lesser God is at Studio 54. For more information and to buy tickets, click here.

Photo Credits: Matthew Murphy