Joshua Jackson,Lauren Ridloff And Cast Signed Children Of a Lesser God Playbill

Description

Children of A Lesser God is a play written by Mark Medloff about Sarah, 26 and deaf since birth, who for 21 years is in a school where the play takes place, that has tried to push speech and lip-reading on her, only hardening her resolve not to learn them. “I don’t do things that I can’t do well,” she explains. That would seem like rationalization if Sarah weren’t so smart and, in a knockout professional debut performance by Lauren Ridloff, so superb at A.S.L. Her fluency and expressiveness make the English speakers around her seem, as one of them actually calls her, dumb. The drama unfolds in the relationship between a smug speech therapist and the pugnacious woman he’s trying to teach is difficult to cast. Not so much because the woman, Sarah, is deaf; there are many excellent deaf actors. But she must also be young and ferocious and profoundly charismatic, which are the right words to describe Lauren Ridloff, a former Miss Deaf America. The speech therapist is also difficult to cast. Because he acts as an interpreter for both the hearing and the deaf, he must be fluent in American Sign Language while also speaking the lines. And because his character suffers from borderline obnoxiousness syndrome, he needs a lot of natural charm to counteract it. The production is lucky to have Joshua Jackson, best known for television work including “The Affair,” in that role. He’s an even match for Ms. Ridloff, which is saying something. This production was staged at the Studio 54 Theater from March 22, 2018 up to May 27, 2018.
This playbill was signed by the whole broadway cast-Lauren Ridloff (Sarah Norman), Joshua Jackson (James Leeds), John McGinty (Orin Dennis), Anthony Edwards (Mr. Franklin), Kecia Lewis (Mrs. Norman), Treshelle Edmond (Lydia) and Julee Cerda (Edna Klein).