Children of a Lesser God

Children of a Lesser God (1980), a play by Mark Medoff. [Longacre Theatre, 887 perf.; Tony Award.] James Leeds ( John Rubinstein) is an instructor at a school for the deaf who tries to teach Sarah Norman ( Phyllis Frelich), a janitor who is much older than the other students, as well as difficult and hostile. Sarah refuses to learn to read lips or to try to speak, insisting on only using sign language. After a while James and Sarah fall in love and wed, but the marriage soon falls apart because she fears James pities her and because she is afraid they might have a deaf child. All the pair can tell each other is, “I'll help you if you'll help me.” Otis L. Guernsey Jr. called the play “an outcry for a group which, it insists, speaks more eloquently for itself in signs than hearing people are able to manage with mere words.” No small part of Frelich's strength in the role of Sarah came from the fact that she herself was born deaf. Mark MEDOFF (b. 1940) was born in Mt. Carmel, Illinois, and was educated at the University of Miami and at Stanford. His earlier plays, When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder? (1973), in which a criminal bully destroys people's illusions, and The Wager (1974), in which a woman is seduced on a bet, were both Off‐Broadway successes.