By William Gibson. Directed by Meg Roe. A Playhouse Theatre Company production. At the Vancouver Playhouse on Thursday, October 15. Continues until October 31

There’s some beautiful work—and there are some big holes—in the Playhouse production of The Miracle Worker.

William Gibson’s play, which began as a 1957 teleplay and premiered on Broadway in 1959, shows us the first weeks in the relationship between Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind, and her teacher, Annie Sullivan. Annie was 20 when she first met six-year-old Helen on the Keller homestead in Alabama in 1888. Annie taught the isolated child how to communicate, and it’s impossible to stay dry-eyed during the breakthrough scene in which Helen discovers language.

At many points the play is thin, however, and requires charismatic performances from both its leads to stay engaging. In the second act, Annie takes Helen to a remote summerhouse to teach her without her family’s interference, for instance, and, if their interactions aren’t nuanced and heartfelt, there’s little to watch.

On opening night, 11-year-old Margot Berner played Helen. (She alternates the role with Emma Grabinsky.) Berner is fantastic. Fearless. In her hands, Helen’s disabilities feel real and the character’s considerable depth of emotion rings true.

But The Miracle Worker is really Annie’s story, and Anna Cummer, who plays that part, is less successful. Under Meg Roe’s direction, Cummer’s Annie is so relentlessly determined from the first time we see her, that her rigidity becomes a straitjacket. In this production, Annie is stripped of warmth and humour. It’s not that Cummer is incapable of showing vulnerability; when Annie finally cracks, it’s touching, but until then the character’s containment is so successful that Cummer’s performance is reduced to one shrill note. Because Cummer shows her chops when she’s finally allowed to, Roe seems to be the culprit here.

Jennifer Clement’s portrait of Helen’s mother Kate is beautifully multicoloured—steel-willed, politic, playful. And Ryan Beil gives Helen’s half-brother James a surprising—and pleasing—hard edge of bitterness.

Allan Stichbury’s set design is a stunner. Half-walls of a huge white house that appears to be made of paper float over the playing area. The design speaks to ennui, lack of definition, loneliness, even as it evokes a transcendent possibility. Stichbury and Roe use a revolve, a choice that expedites the play’s many transitions and adds to the sense that, for Helen, the physical world is unreliable.

With its pastoral ochres and chilling blues, John Webber’s dramatic lighting complements the palette of Sheila White’s elegantly simple costumes.

Roe and her company have worked hard on a moving play that can also be simplistic and sentimental. The results are impressive, but incomplete.