First Nighter: Marcus’s ‘Killing of Sister George’

Context is everything. At least that’s the impression I had on leaving The Actors Company Theatre revival of Frank Marcus’s 1965 multiple prize-winning play, The Killing of Sister George, at the Beckett. It’s the only explanation I could find for the production’s seeming merely bizarre now since it had been so effective when it first played in London and then was transferred to Broadway in 1966 with original cast members, including Beryl Reid and Eileen Atkins. At the time its depiction of lesbian couple June Buckridge (Caitlin O’Connell here) and Alice “Childie” McNaught (Margot White), in a crisis also involving Mrs. Mercy Croft (Cynthia Harris), was groundbreaking, shocking. Yes, Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour had preceded it, but Hellman had practiced prevalent 1930s discretion on introducing her drama of a closeted couple at a girls school.