Summer Theater play continues to radiate at Intime

The name Paul Zindel takes many of us back in time to our junior high school reading syllabi, specifically Zindel's "The Pigman."

Yet Zindel's audience extends beyond the teeny bopper sector thanks largely to the success of his earlier play: "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds."

This play transformed Zindel from a high school science teacher, who wrote as a hobby, to a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. The movie version first appeared in 1971, one year after it won the Pulitzer Prize.

Erin Gilley '02 brings Zindel's play to Princeton, and her production of "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" kicks off Theatre Intime's 2001-2002 season, playing Sept. 20-22, 27-29.

Zindel's psychological domestic drama centers on Beatrice, a single, alcoholic mother (Erin Carter '02) raising her two daughters, Tilly (Shira Concool of Princeton Day School) and Ruth (Andrea Spillman of the Lawrenceville School).

Tilly enters a science contest, against her mother's wishes, which she subsequently wins. The title of the play, also the title of Tilly's middle school science project, captures the real focus of the play: the relationships between these three females.

Through her scientific investigations, Tilly discovers that the marigolds closest to the gamma ray source shrivel while those further away stand the best chance of flourishing. Ruth, the high-school-aged daughter has a closer relationship with her mother Beatrice than Tilly does.

Gilley uses addictions, such as smoking, to suggest that Ruth seems destined to fall into the same potholes as her mother. Tilly, in contrast, withdraws into herself in the presence of her mother and sister, reverently obsessive with her plants and science project.

The Nanny (Sarah Rodriguez '02) and Janice (Liza Minno of the George Quaker School) round out the five-actor cast. Without a single line, Nanny functions as another extreme characterization in the play.

Her painstakingly slow movements suggest neglected old age crawling slowly toward death. Janice, one of Tilly's competitors at the science fair, epitomizes one final extreme. While Tilly investigated gamma rays, Janice boiled a dead cat to put its skeleton back together.

Tilley's pet rabbit and her science teacher, Mr. Goodman, are the only male characters in the play and Mr. Goodman doesn't ever actually appear on stage.

Gilley, however, does not believe that Zindel was writing an overtly feminist play. Zindel was merely exploring the phenomenon of a fatherless domestic situation while doing his "civic duty to provide strong feminine leads," Gilley said. "Without the male dynamic, women have more freedom to move around on stage."

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Gilley attempts to capture Zindel's starkly honest play by providing an intimate view into what could be any place in America. Working with set designer Robin Giese '02, the dilapidated house on stage parallels the family within. Both houses and families should serve to shelter and protect. Cracks within their structures also make those within vulnerable.

Gilley's production spills over from the Princeton summer theater program, giving Princeton students the chance to see a seasoned cast.