The Globe and Mail - Februrary 12, 1988

"Marigolds a dated but still potent family drama"
Ray Conlogue

THERE WAS some question Wednesday night whether The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds was an appropriate show for Young People's Theatre. Wasn't Paul Zindel's 1964 play about a sadistic and embittered mother and her two daughters strong stuff for adolescents? went the musing.

That says a great deal about the supposed toughness and world-weariness of the 1980s - that a sentimental play from two decades ago can still be upsetting.

The play, in fact, was an excellent choice, especially as remarkably performed by Dawn Greenhalgh and her two real-life daughters, Samantha and the celebrated Megan (Anne of Green Gables). In fact, given such a formidable theatrical family, one marvels at the temerity of Peter Moss in asserting that a director could have any say in the proceedings. The results in any event were fine and sound ones.

The emotional reality of the situation is confirmed very early by Megan Follows as Matilda, the girl who is browbeaten by her mother and whose fond feelings are diverted to school science projects. Having discovered that the atoms in our bodies come to us from the original explosions that created the stars, she conceives a terrific emotional empathy for the atom - "What a beautiful word."

Megan, when we first see her, is sitting on the floor preparing cards for her school project, a study of irradiated marigold seeds. She is so intently buried in the reality of the character that you hardly recognize her at first, seeing only a 13-year-old child, careless of her appearance, bony knees protruding from a short skirt, hair fly-away, absorbed in sorting and writing.

Dawn Greenhalgh as the mother, Beatrice, explodes into the scene, belittling everyone in sight. This is an angry and disappointed human being who has long since forgotten to show affection to her children. Abuse of parental authority and psychological violence halo her like a dark nimbus.

Against this the small child has no defence, so she resorts to conciliatory mildness. There is nothing distracted about it; in fact, she is very controlled and clearly fighting to survive with some dignity. Her eyes and body are alert to ward off the next blow, whether from her mother or older sister.

The sister, Ruth, is a high school senior flirt whose hyperactive personality is also a defence mechanism against the mother - apparently more successful. Samantha Follows plays her with exuberance and technical virtuosity (including a remarkable epileptic seizure), although not with the same apparently easy depth of conviction that Megan can manage.

Ruth's ridiculously uplifted bosom, enshrined in a tight sweater, is a kind of disdainful battering-ram of youthfulness with which she knows she can ultimately defeat her mother. Greenhalgh, with a gutteral and grudging growl, enviously yields up a little turf to this foul-mouthed princess, and redoubles her scorn for pale and shrinking Matilda.

The dialogue now sounds garish to our ears, lapsing sometimes into an ersatz rhetoric used by playwrights at the time when attempting a tragic tone. "Half-life!" cries Beatrice, scornfully (if improbably) adopting a scientific term her daughter has used. "You're looking at the original half-life! I got stuck with one daughter with half a mind; another one who's half a test tube."

But the dramatic situation is unarguably sound, and still makes an impact in spite of its dated tone. Zindel has also observed a human dynamic very carefully, and knows just how much of Beatrice' violence is real and how much is hollow pose. He also leads, with structural soundness, to a situation where Beatrice' long-held threat of violence transmutes suddenly into real violence and she brings her world crashing down around her.

The play ends bleakly, but after a brief black-out Matilda returns and makes a final optimistic and lyrical speech, her eyes lifted heavenward. This also is a feature of that era's theatre writing, an implied apology for breaking the then-powerful boundaries of what was permitted in American family drama. Now it seems mawkish, but Matilda's character is so feelingly and consistently drawn throughout the play - and here, so wonderfully acted - that the evening ends on a convincingly upbeat note.

Zindel, like many writers of the time, specifies in mountainous detail just what the Hunsdorfer household should look like. It is an old storefront, now a shabby apartment, with newspapers pasted over the huge front window in lieu of curtains. Michael Eagan has faithfully reproduced it, in the spirit of Peter Moss' respectfully realistic revival of the play. This is probably wise: Marigolds is a play of its time, and is best enjoyed in a faithful reproduction.

Source: The Globe and Mail

The Ottawa Citizen - Februrary 13, 1988

"Megan enchants in debut; It's a big leap from chatter-box Anne to the quiet Matilda"
Rod Currie

It's a big leap from TV chatter-box to tongue-tied science student, but Megan Follows has accomplished the transformation from bubbly Anne of Green Gables with exceeding grace in her first professional stage appearance.

As her mouthy on-stage mother puts it, "Some people were born to speak and others were born to listen."

Follows, as the bright but repressed Matilda in Paul Zindel's award-winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, is a listener.

And she does it enchantingly - her narrow, chalky face reflecting every tiny joy, her fear of a boozy, outlandishly free-wheeling mother, and her gentle love for the doomed pet rabbit Peter.

It's all a far cry from the flame-haired and gabby Anne she so successfully portrayed in the TV adaption of the Lucy Maud Montgomery stories set in rural Prince Edward Island.

And Follows's stage debut this week at the Young People's Theatre had an unusual twist in that she starred opposite her real-life mother, Dawn Greenhalgh, and older sister Samantha Follows - in the roles of her mother and sister.

Zindel's poignant drama, written in 1964 when he was only 25, went largely unrecognized until it opened off-Broadway in 1970 to rave reviews and then ran for 819 performances.

Matilda - who looks much younger than Follows's 20 years - is a sort of ridiculous figure at school, with fly-away hair, falling-down knee socks and a timid nature. But she's a budding genius of sorts and a contender for the top prize in a school science fair with her experiment on the effect of radiation on flower seeds.

Her loud, chain-smoking mother is the sort who figures she amply contributes to her daughters' education by providing them with a 75-watt bulb to study by.

She's a woman who was a joke a school, failed in her hair-dressing and real estate courses, failed in her marriage and is a disaster as a mother.

Ultimately, however, she is charmed by the idea of Matilda's success.

"Somewhere back in this little turtle-size brain of mine I feel a little proud," she says in one of her rare mellow moods, before turning her wrath on the unfortunate Peter - "that angora manure machine."

Samantha Follows, 22, is superbly giddy and erratic as the mentally-troubled Ruth, whose intellectual endeavors do not soar much above interest in Devil's Kiss lipstick and sweaters so tight they threaten, as her mother puts it, to "cut off the circulation to your chest."

This is a delicately tragic play and the Young People's Theatre has advised parents and teachers that it is not suitable for children under 12. Still, the soaring goodness and optimism of the Matilda character manages to lift it above the squalor that seems almost to have doomed the family.

For Megan Follows it was a class act of underplaying a sensitive role.

Source: The Ottawa Citizen

Toronto Star - Februrary 11, 1988

"Gamma Rays radiates confident direction"
Henry Mietkiewicz

Young People's Theatre actually presented The Effect Of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds last night, which is something of a surprise, considering how easily it could have deteriorated into The Megan Follows Show.

The 20-year-old actress is preceded by an international reputation as the star of TV's Anne Of Green Gables, as well as several modest but creditable movie roles.

So, as the pivotal character in Paul Zindel's 1971 Pulitzer Prize- winning play, Follows was in danger of inadvertently easing her co- stars into the shadows.

Gamma Rays is also her first professional stage appearance. And, despite sincere plans to perform in an ensemble with her mother Dawn Greenhalgh and sister Samantha Follows, there must have been considerable temptation to shift the emphasis in Megan's direction.

But surprise! Director Peter Moss has, indeed, given us Gamma Rays as Zindel intended it - simplistic, perhaps, but genuine and moving nonetheless.

Megan is anything but the glowing ingenue. Dressed in ankle socks, short skirt and baggy sweater, she truly seems like shy, adolescent Matilda, with chalky complexion, stringy, shoulder- length hair and head nodding self-effacingly forward.

As a result, Matilda is put squarely in her place as the insecure but highly intelligent daughter whose quest for knowledge is in dire jeopardy.

The chief adversary in her lower-class household is her mother Beatrice (Greenhalgh), an embittered widow who secretly envies Matilda's award for a science project measuring the effect of radiation on flowers. Even more galling, Matilda's breakthrough occurs at the same school where, years earlier, her under-achieving mother earned the nickname Betty the Loon.

To a lesser extent, Matilda must also contend with her older sister Ruth (Samantha), whose glimmer of compassion pales next to the maliciousness and lack of ambition she has inherited from Beatrice.

The low-key approach that Moss applies to Megan is wisely extended to the others. Rather than delivering her lines with alcoholic bravado, Greenhalgh's speech rarely rises beyond a conversational tone and this heightens the venomousness of her sneering remarks.

Similarly, Samantha never descends to the level of high school floozy, but uses a loose-limbed stance and high-pitched squeal to suggest the libidinousness of youth.

In this unfortunate age when horror stories about the abuse of children are commonplace, Zindel's script has lost some of the original impact that hinged on our shock at a mother's destructiveness.

Even so, Zindel draws a compelling parallel between Matilda's family and her flowers - a suggestion that some buds (like Ruth) can be damaged by radiation (that is, Beatrice), while others (like Matilda) somehow manage to flourish.

Given the ugliness of society's latest revelations, his view may be overly optimistic. But this strong and confident production of Gamma Rays reassures us that a spark of hope may yet exist amid the gloom.

Source: Toronto Star