Kerr is an American essayist, playwright, and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama critic. 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 [who is playing Beatrice], slatternly mother of two and savior of none, is at her house-cleaning again, which means that she is picking up the accumulated refuse of her life and hurling it to another, though no better, spot. The bundle comes...