The Revival of Mark Medoff's "Children of a Lesser God" Is Less than It Could be

The revival of Mark Medoff's Tony winner for best play (1980) feels amiss despite the two outstanding leads.  James (Joshua Jackson) does the heavy lifting signing & speaking for both himself and Sarah (Lauren Ridloff in a heartfelt Broadway debut).  Too much weight is shouldered by the two which burdens the storytelling.  James is the new speech teacher at the school for the deaf where he meets Sarah, a former student who stayed on as a border & housekeeper.  James is assigned to work with Sarah to get her to speak.   Sarah is not a willing pupil and makes her refusal to speak known, "I don't do things that I can't do well."  The fractious teacher/pupil relationship turns into a love match.  But their love is fraught with friction.  There is mounting frustration felt by both.  The shortcomings with the play stem from a riddled script, flimsy sets and flawed audio.  Too much of the dialogue gets lost in translation.  However, the prescient messaging of the play resounds clearly.  The multi-racial cast echoes the struggle to feel empathy versus pity and proffering help without browbeating.  Grammy & Tony winning composer Brandford Marsalis' score underlines the disability of deafness to fully appreciate the gifts of music.  The play signals a reckoning for failing to inhabit & embrace one another's worlds.  And, undermining and under valuing people for themselves is sinful.