visible in the cloud chamber, a phenomenon that could go on for eternity. Rising lights reveal Tillie preparing to plant irradiated seeds. Beatrice, scanning realty advertisements, mixes conjecture on the potential of various properties with questions about Tillie’s science project. Nanny, the aged boarder, begins the slow trek to the table as Tillie tries to explain the concept of atomic half-life to Beatrice. Beatrice disparages Nanny, her daughters, and herself through derisive double meanings for the term “half-life.”

Beatrice phones Mr. Goodman, expressing concern that Tillie’s seeds were irradiated, turning aside his explanations. After several other demonstrations of instability and cruelty, Beatrice shows another aspect of her character. During a thunderstorm at night, Ruth suffers another seizure. Beatrice orders Tillie back to bed in typically harsh fashion but cradles Ruth with genuine compassion and tells how her father, Ruth’s grandfather, used to sell fruit and vegetables from a horse-drawn wagon. Beatrice’s mother had died quite early, and her father fell seriously ill while Beatrice was still rather young. Anxious for her future, he urged her to marry for security’s sake. She still sees her father’s face in her nightmares.

The following scene shows Beatrice again lashing out at Tillie and Nanny until Ruth dashes in. She reports excitedly that Tillie is a finalist in the science fair. The principal calls to ask Beatrice to attend the final judging and awards. Beatrice is rude and evasive. Her first thought is that people will ridicule her. Only after Tillie runs off in tears does Beatrice realize how her paranoiac response has hurt Tillie.

Act 2 opens with the Hunsdorfers about to leave for the final science fair presentations. Working as an attendance aide for Mr. Goodman, Ruth has overheard gossip about Beatrice, who used to be called “Betty the Loon.” Ruth blackmails Tillie into giving her the rabbit by threatening to tell Beatrice the school gossip. Tillie concedes—she deeply wants her mother to share this one significant event in her life, even at the cost of her pet—but when Beatrice orders Ruth to stay home with Nanny, Ruth explodes with the epithet “Betty the Loon,” and Beatrice crumbles emotionally. Ruth goes to school in Beatrice’s place. In a scene change through a lighting shift, another science fair finalist, Janice Vickery, superficially explains the past, present, and future of her cat skeleton. Back at the Hunsdorfer home, Beatrice makes two phone calls. One is a bitter call to the high school. The other is to Nanny’s daughter: Beatrice wants Nanny out of the house the next day. Finally, Beatrice heads upstairs with a bottle of chloroform.

In another shift by spotlight, Tillie cites the past, present, and future of her project. Lightly irradiated seeds produced normal plants. Moderately irradiated seeds produced various mutations. The heavily bombarded seeds either died or produced dwarfs. Knowing the range of effects, she believes some mutations will be good. She declares her faith in the strange, beautiful energy of the atom.

Beatrice is drunk when the girls get home. She has begun to refit the living room for a tea shop. Ruth brings the dead rabbit downstairs and goes into convulsions. The play closes with Tillie declaring her curiosity about the universe, her sense of place in the order of things, and her fascination with the atom.

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds presents a family, broken as Zindel’s was, in financial straits, deriving income from a board-and-care patient, as Zindel’s family had. Beatrice’s unfinished real-estate and beauty classes mirror the varied attempts Zindel’s mother made at supporting the family. The significance of Beatrice’s preparation, in the last scene, for a tea shop is open to question. The move hints at growth in her character, yet she has killed the rabbit, the symbol of warmth and tenderness for the daughters. Tillie’s success at least has stirred Beatrice to a new beginning.

Ruth has shifted from contempt for Tillie to pride in Tillie’s achievement. That pride, however, seems rooted more in Ruth’s concern for social status than in genuine understanding of either Tillie or the experiment. Tillie herself has not changed significantly in the play. At the outset, she speaks of her fascination with science. At the end, her success confirms her self-esteem and potential for growth in spite of the abuse from home.

Thus, the play relies on revelation of character more than on development of character in response to conflict. In a decade accustomed to “slice-of-life” literature and ambiguous if not bleak conclusions to many stories and plays, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds presents a positive faith in the future through science, and hope for one character in overcoming the emotional damage common in modern life.

And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little

And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little offers a different constellation of women but still mirrors several aspects of Zindel’s personal experience. The three Reardon sisters, Ceil, Catherine, and Anna, embody many of the ills of teachers long settled in the education system, ills well-known to Zindel and anyone else with some teaching experience.

Of the three sisters, Ceil has been the assertive one. She has taken the courses necessary to carry her from classroom to administrative work with the board of education. She took the chance of marrying Edward Adams, although Catherine dated him first. Ceil, too, arranged for their dead mother’s estate to be settled seven months before the night of the play’s action, and now Ceil is the one bringing papers for Anna’s commitment for psychiatric care.

Act 1 begins with Mrs. Pentrano, the wife of the building superintendent, entering the Reardon sisters’ apartment. She asks if the new lock has satisfied Anna and expresses concern for Anna’s condition. A delivery boy brings groceries, including chopped meat, which Catherine arranges in a candy box. Untipped, the delivery boy exits with flippant sarcasm. Mrs. Pentrano has been pressing Catherine for a cosmetics and toiletries order despite Catherine’s objections. Ceil arrives and dismisses Mrs. Pentrano with little more than a greeting.

Catherine berates Ceil for making scant contact since their mother’s death. She also complains that her fellow faculty members believe that Catherine’s position as assistant principal is a consequence of Ceil’s being on the board of education. Ceil cuts through the criticism with questions about Anna; she also expresses her concern for Catherine, who, people say, has taken to drinking. During their exchanges, Catherine eats raw meat from the candy box. Since her breakdown, Anna has turned vegetarian and wants no meat or animal byproducts in the apartment. Slaughter of animals is too reminiscent of human death.

Catherine explains to Ceil the development of Anna’s condition. During a trip to Europe after their mother’s death, Anna suffered a cat bite. She grew convinced that she had rabies. She demanded shots for the disease and thereafter was on tranquilizers so that she could return to teaching in September. Suffering harassment by students, however, Anna eventually broke down, committing some unspecified form of sexual indiscretion with a male student.

Anna enters. Groggy with medication, she had forgotten that Ceil was due for dinner. Catherine goes about preparing fruits and vegetables for their meal. Anna worries about the presence of Mother’s old pistol in the apartment. Ceil assures her that Mother kept only blanks in the gun. Anna searches desk and bookcase until she locates the pistol in an album. Anna rambles about her condition, criticizes Ceil for taking Edward away from Catherine, then fires the pistol. Catherine tries to humor Anna, retrieves the pistol, and puts it back in the album, saying that Ceil can take it away later.

The second act opens with the sisters, still at dinner, interrupted by Fleur Stein. Fleur, an acting guidance teacher at the school where Catherine and Anna work, brings an official faculty get-well gift. Her husband, Bob, is getting the package from the car. Fleur says she debated whether the gift should be religious. Anna responds with a long story of losing religion because she saw a puppy hit by a truck. When Bob presents the gift, Anna loses control. They have brought her leather gloves. She throws them across the room. Ceil explains Anna’s aversion to animal products, and Catherine belatedly introduces Ceil to the Steins. Fleur is counselor for the boy involved in Anna’s case, and she pressures Ceil for help in securing her guidance teacher’s licensure. In return, she will persuade the boy’s parents not to sue for damages. Fleur downplays judgment on the incident, attributing a loss of traditional religious attitudes to modern acceptance of science. Bob Stein, given certain provocations, bluntly attributes Anna’s breakdown to lack of male companionship. He offers to get Anna a date for the evening and drapes Fleur’s fox fur stole over Anna’s shoulders. She screams and kicks the stole away, deploring the cruelty of the fur trade. Bob reacts in anger, insulting all three sisters in turn. Catherine suggests that Anna show Bob their mother’s album.

As the third act opens, Anna fires the pistol at Bob’s face. Bob grabs the gun, telling Anna that she has real problems. Anna, in response to an earlier comment by Fleur, asks Bob why he never uses his own bathroom at home. He retorts that he hates the soaps and rough paper that Fleur steals from the school. Fleur attempts to smooth over Bob’s irate exit, assuring Ceil that she will do her best to help. With the Steins gone, Ceil wants to discuss business with Catherine alone, but Anna insists on staying. She reminisces about an eccentric principal they once knew. Ceil brings out the commitment papers and tells Catherine to get Anna packed for travel the next day.

Catherine rebels at the order. Anna asks Ceil how Edward makes love to her. Furious, Ceil shoves meat from the candy box in Anna’s face. She screams and runs off to wash. Ceil keeps Catherine from following Anna. Catherine finally admits that she hates the dominance in both their late mother and Ceil. In return, Ceil rebukes Catherine for leaving her choices in life to others. Ceil throws the commitment papers down and leaves. Catherine now must take responsibility for either keeping Anna home or committing her for psychiatric care.

Examining the lives of professional educators, Zindel presents a family with the occupational stability and social standing he himself experienced in his first career. The Misses Reardon, like Tillie and Ruth Hunsdorfer, have suffered from an unhealthy family situation: an absent father and a domineering mother. Ceil, assertive in her own right, made choices that carried her out of Mother Reardon’s sphere of control and eventually to the top echelon of her profession. Her progress is a logical extension of the strength of character Tillie Hunsdorfer maintains despite Beatrice’s dominance. Catherine and Anna, in contrast, show the effects of remaining under Mother’s control to the end. Catherine shrinks from asserting herself: She cannot briskly dismiss Mrs. Pentrano as Ceil can; rather than cope with awkward comments by the Steins, she runs the blender; instead of confronting Anna with her own preference of diet, she sneaks meat into the house and eats it raw. Both Catherine’s craving for raw meat and Anna’s indiscretion represent inordinate reactions to unfulfilled needs.

In addition to the parallels in family dynamics, there is another link between And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little and its predecessor. Tillie Hunsdorfer’s youthful faith in science has evolved, in Fleur Stein, into the laconic conclusion that science has supplanted religious faith in modern life. Anna, in contrast, cannot rationalize pain and suffering; she traces the loss of her religion to the death of a pup. Ceil makes no claims regarding religion. She does live by the premise, however, that a person must accept responsibility for choices in life and must seize opportunities for change and growth. At the close of the play, she leaves Catherine with the choice of compensating for Anna’s incapacity at home or committing her for psychiatric care. Catherine seems, at last, ready to accept the responsibility.

Amulets Against the Dragon Forces

Amulets Against the Dragon Forces, a revision of A Destiny with Half Moon Street, is exceptional for Zindel in that the protagonist and antagonist are both male; however, these characters also struggle with the issues of disappointment, inadequacy, and betrayal. A cycle of abuse is revealed as an old woman who had long ago attacked her son for his budding sexuality is brought home from the hospital to die. The son, Floyd, is the antagonist of the play. He is now a nearly deranged adult and has a history of alcoholism and child abuse, one featuring the habitual use of young male prostitutes, a series of whom he has brought to the family home where he exchanges shelter for sexual favors. A divorced, itinerant practical nurse has been engaged to care for the dying mother, and she brings her own son, the protagonist Chris, into the household. Being the youngest and most innocent character, he retains some characteristics of childhood, including a hobby of creating balsa wood replicas of local landmarks populated by models he has carved. These “amulets” are mere charms and seem unlikely to stave off the “dragon forces” of the play’s title. Chris uses the figures to represent characters in made-up stories. He hopes to become a writer—an ambition suggested to him by a mentally unstable teacher. For the near future, Chris plans to escape life with his kleptomaniac mother by going to Florida to live with his father, but the father refuses. Chris’s mother does finally succeed in buying a home for herself and her son, barely completing the transaction before the old woman she is caring for dies. The play ends as Floyd suggests to Chris that the passage of time may someday allow the boy to accept his own disquieting sexual urges. Zindel has indicated that this is the last play he plans to write set in Staten Island and using events and factors influential in his own upbringing.

Every Seventeen Minutes the Crowd Goes Crazy!

Every Seventeen Minutes the Crowd Goes Crazy! portrays a family of teenage children recently abandoned by their parents, who communicate with the youngsters infrequently and then only via a fax machine. Written on commission for the American Conservatory Theater’s Young Conservatory, the play addresses the breakdown of family life as caused by the societal ills of commercialism and hedonism. The parents prefer the thrill of the track, where the horse races finish “every seventeen minutes,” and so have fled their failing careers and dependent offspring—children they find to be unbearable users. They express regret over leaving the youngest child, Ulie, who is only twelve years old, but predict his inability to escape a future of self-centeredness. The older children plan various means of economic survival, including charging admission to regular keg parties, but they are meanwhile cleaning out any remaining cash advances available on their parents’ credit cards. The overall effect is ironic and painful as the young protagonists bravely hide or perhaps even abandon their feelings of disappointment and longing for a return to a more normal life. A one-act play, the work begins and ends with the “Oprah-Speak Gap Chorus” chanting a jumble of slogans, ads, and National Enquirer-type headlines.