William Gibson first wrote The Miracle Worker for Playhouse 90, a television anthology drama series that gave networks the opportunity to air something different from the traditional long-running serials, but more meaty than half-our sit-coms or gameshows. He adapted the television teleplay for the stage two years later, and the three-act play premiered on October 19, 1959, at the Playhouse Theater.
The play is based on the autobiography of Helen Keller, and tells the story of her life from childhood in Tuscumbia, Alabama, to her discovery of the power that sign language had over both her life and the lives of her family members as well. The cast of the original production included Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke, who played Helen; Duke played this role for the play's entire seven hundred and nineteen performances, although Bancrpft did not remain with the company for long and was replaced by Suzanne Pleshette. This was the second time in as many years that Gibson had worked with Bancroft, their first play together having been Gibson's first staged play, Two for the Seesaw. When the play was debuted in London's West End in 1961, it launched the theatrical career of a young actress by the name of Jenny Seagrove, who went on to become better known for her romantic relationship with film director Michael Winner who was several decades her senior. The London production also featured William Gaunt who would go on to become a household name in the U.K, during the 1980s as part of the cast of the hit dramatic series Howard's Way.
The play was reprised in 2010 to mark its fiftieth anniversary with Little Miss Sunshine star Abigail Breslin cast as Helen but the modern version was less well-received than its original production which was widely praised for its outstanding dramatic performances but universally panned for the clumsiness of the language used by the writer. Despite this, the play received four Tony Awards, including Best Play, and Best Actress for Anne Bancroft. Patty Duke also received the Theater World Award for Best Dramatic Performance. All four main cast members came together again for the screen adaptation of the play which resulted in Academy Awards for Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories respectively.
Although The Miracle Worker remained Gibson's best known play, his first, the two-character play Two for the Seesaw debuted two years previously and starred Henry Fonda alongside Anne Bancroft. He also holds the distinction of having authored the longest running one-woman play in Broadway history; ironically, the play, Golda, which was a work about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, had been an epic bomb when it was originally produced in 1977, but in 2003 it was revived as Gilda's Balcony, and ran all the way through until 2005.
