This is the timeless lesson of the play and the root of its moving power and truth. And yet, as Tillie's experiment proves, something beautiful and full of promise can emerge from even the most barren, afflicted soil. Tortured, acerbic, slatternly, she is as much a victim of her own nature as of the cruel lot which has been hers. Proud and yet jealous, too filled with her own hurts to accept her daughter's success, Beatrice can only maim when she needs to love and deride when she wants to praise. Encouraged by her teacher, Tillie undertakes a gamma ray experiment with marigolds that wins a prize at her high school and alsoīrings on the shattering climax of the play. One daughter, Ruth, is a pretty but highly strung girl subject to convulsions while the younger daughter, Matilda, plain and almost pathologically shy, has an intuitive gift for science. Woodward gives a superb performance in this tale of a secluded boor of a mother and her two strange daughers.įrowzy, acid-tongued, supporting herself and her two daughters by taking in a decrepit old boarder, Beatrice Hunsdorfer wreaks a petty vengeance on everybody about her. Life's been a real bitch to Beatrice Hunsdorfer. Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning play by Paul Zindel
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