SOURCE: "Everything's Coming Up Marigolds … , " in The New York Times, 19 April 1970, pp. 1, 3.

Kerr is an American essayist, playwright, and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama critic. Throughout his career, he has written theater reviews for such publications as Commonweal, the New York Herald Tribune , and the New York Times. Below, he recounts the memorable aspects of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds and probes the desperate lives of the characters.

Whenever I think of Paul Zindel's The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, I am going to think of three things, not one of them the title (the title, by the way, makes perfect sense and you will remember it readily once you have seen the play). The first is the sound, the sheer weighted sound, of a load of old newspapers being dumped from a balcony landing. Sada Thompson, slatternly mother of two and savior of none...