The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
by Paul Zindel
directed by Ellen Fenster
June 7 - 24, 2013

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds is about an unexpected and lovely mutation: how something beautiful and full of promise can emerge from even the most barren, afflicted soil. Quiet and painfully shy but with an intuitive gift for science, Tillie undertakes a gamma ray experiment with marigolds for her school amidst the wreck and ruin of her family life. The radiation in her own life comes from her vengeful and acerbic mother, her highly strung and convulsive older sister, and the chaos of something akin to a warped hospice program for elderly boarders being run out of their own home. Yet through it all, Tillie proves that sometimes radiation causes strange and beautiful mutations, totally unlike the original plants.

Paul Zindel received both the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Drama Critics’ Award for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds. The play was also adapted for the screen, directed by Paul Newman and starred his wife Joan Woodward and daughter Nell Potts. Woodward won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival for her performance.

*The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds will be the final production in Gremlin Theatre’s performance space at 2400 University Avenue.

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