Broken English

NEW YORK A Katy Bolger presentation of a play in two acts by Geraldine Sherman. Directed by Stephen Hollis.

Ruth ... Fleur Phillips
Karl ... Ahvi Spindell
Trude ... Mary Testa
Miss Singer ... Maxine Taylor-Morris

"Broken English" is a play that doesn't speak very clearly. Author Geraldine Sherman seems to have more than a few things on her mind, but her work here barely rises to a whisper.

At times suggesting what might have happened if Tennessee Williams, in deep decline, had attempted a "Secret Garden" adaptation, "Broken English" tells the story of young Ruth (Fleur Phillips), a delicate, 12-ish girl raised in a London home for refugee children in the years following World War II. It's 1956, and Ruth, British in every way but her Austrian blood, is reunited with her garish, low-class refugee parents on the occasion of her loutish father's release from prison.

Sherman wastes no time giving the father, Karl (Ahvi Spindell), any saving grace, or complexity for that matter. He's a crude bully who walks around the family's tiny flat in his underwear, a loud, crass and intimidating creep. Wife Trude (Mary Testa) is a bit more sensitive -- her eyes water when Ruth declines a kiss -- but no less vulgar.

The girl's only retreat is Miss Singer, the kindly old spinster next door, a retired schoolmarm who tutors Ruth in Latin, Dickens and all things British, including Christianity, much to the consternation of the Jewish Karl and Trude. In no time the parents are resentful and jealous of the old woman's friendship with their daughter. They suspect the woman of being a predatory lesbian, although they never voice that accusation to Miss Singer.

Or rather, playwright Sherman never voices that accusation to Miss Singer, and the play suffers for it. Throughout "Broken English" Sherman gives in to a timidity that completely undoes the play. She introduces topics that could ignite -- a latent lesbian's sweet and honorable affection for a young girl, the complicated cultural clash between Christians and Jews in postwar London, even domestic violence -- yet falls short of developing these issues in any meaningful way. Even her characters feel rough-draft, one-dimensional and predictable. We wait from the outset for the central casting spinster to intone, "Books! Books will give you a home!"

And yet Sherman does capture Ruth's loneliness and panic quite nicely, even if the character's alienation at times seems more petulant than existential. Phillips plays the girl's heartbroken disappointment quite well, although she can't make much of Ruth's sudden strength that abruptly ends the play.

Rest of the cast plays as written, with Testa giving the mother a few layers that the other characters lack. In fact, Ruth's rejection of her mother gives the girl a brattiness that the playwright may or may not have intended. That, like much else in "Broken English," is uncertain.

Set, James Wolk; lights, Christien Methot; costumes, Pamela Scofield; sound, Lewis Flinn; casting, Michele Ortlip; production stage manager, Lori Lundquist. Opened Sept. 25, 1994, at the 28th Street Theater. Reviewed Sept. 28; 99 seats; $ 12. Running time: 2 HOURS.

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