It’s not easy to predict the effects of radiation on seeds, and whether it will prevent them from flowering or turn them into some sort of freaks.

This is true for people as well as flowers.

The Ixion Theatre Ensemble is presenting Paul Zindel’s 1964 play, “The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds.” A toxic mother, Beatrice (P.K. Van Voorhees), poisons her children with her abusive behavior, turning one, Ruth (Grace Hinkley), into a convulsive. She turns another, Tilly (Kaleel Van Voorhees), into a shy girl who takes refuge in science and in the wonder that we all came from the sun and these atoms inside us are powerful, amazing things, even if we can’t see them.

Beatrice keeps one daughter home from school even though she loves it, while sending the other daughter who manages to fail all her classes. Tilly blossoms under the attention of a science teacher who opens up a new world to her and encourages her to conduct experiments with marigolds for a science fair. She plants seeds that have been exposed to radiation and tracks what happens to them based on how much radiation they received.

The play, directed by Jeff Croff, is short—a mere one hour and 15 minutes—but the pacing was slow and the main actors often seemed lost onstage, unable to drive the plot with the necessary harshness and tension that this script calls for. Despite the cruelty of the words being spoken, the play contained very little tension and meandered when it should have punched.

Beatrice and Tilly are played by a real-life mother and daughter team. P.K. Van Voorhees had the physicality for the part, moving like a mother weary of the world and defeated by the hand of cards she’s been dealt. But she never achieved the level of volatility called for in the character. She was too soft and gentle in a role that requires sharp edges. She was a figure of pity, but never one to be feared or loathed.

Hinkley was a bright spot in the play. She came on with energy and knew just how to show off sharp edges that hid a vulnerability and fragility that sometimes burst. She was the perfect foil to her quiet sister. She had the casual cruelty down pat and in her we saw some of the dangerous effects of a radioactive parent. The closer she got to her mother, the more she was deformed and the more dangerous she became. Hinkley was able to show a teenager who was outwardly sassy but lacking in any of her sister’s resilience or ability to adapt. She was especially provocative in the scenes where she had convulsions and created some of the play’s few moments of high risk and energy.

Judith Evans played Nanny, the boarder who never speaks but wears on the mother’s nerves with her senility. Evans played her for laughs and sometimes seemed to be grinning and winking at the audience, inviting them to be amused by her. She spent too much time rattling her walker in front of Beatrice, blocking any reaction from the mother for no apparent reason other than to show the audience she was senile. It was odd blocking that detracted from what else was going on.

Kaleel Van Voorhees has a challenging role in that she is given very few lines and a lot of stage time to communicate the part of a child whose mother frustrates her at every turn. The space is limited at Creative Corridor, but it seemed a shame so much of her scene setting time in the first act was spent far from the audience behind other set pieces. It made it more difficult for her to be silently expressive. She did demonstrate, especially in the second act, a resilience that offers the play’s few moments of hope.

Emily Stokes gave an amusing monologue in the second act as the science fair competitor who boiled a cat to get a skeleton. She was genuine and the comedy in her scene was authentic.

The Sunday night performance also had issues with the sound sometimes not matching what the actors were doing on stage and being too loud. In the thunderstorm scene, there were two separate times where the mother’s speech was covered completely by thunder and would be played better if she waited to deliver her line until after the thunder crack was over rather than losing it entirely.

“The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds” had its moments of good storytelling, but it lacked tension and sharpness, stealing any sort of cohesiveness from the show.

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