Depending on viewpoint, they are either dazzlingly beautiful or perversely ugly. Her friend, urban schoolteacher Elsa (Carla Gugino), is an enthusiast, while the town clergyman, Marius (Jim Dale), is disapproving and determined to see her placed in an...

800 miles, Elsa is not happy. She talks to Helen angrily, full of frustration. But after a few moments, the two are on good terms. Elsa energizes Helen, and the artist is so happy to see her. It takes most of the first act to set up why Elsa has come so...

The widow, played by Harris, finds herself the center of a tug-of-war between a local clergyman, played by Jim Dale, who finds her work to be idolatrous and wants to pack her off to a retirement home, and a young school teacher, played by Gugino, who...

Miss Helen is passionate about her work, which began, tellingly, on the death of her husband. But art is isolating; the village children mock her "monsters," as does Marius Byleveld (spot-on Jim Dale), the reactionary minister who worries about Miss...

The intimate drama about an eccentric South African artist opened last night at New York's American Airlines Theatre, in a production whose high-profile cast includes Tony Award-winners Rosemary Harris ("The Lion in Winter," "The Royal Family") and Jim...

Act One is largely, and leisurely, devoted to unpacking the emotional baggage of both women. Conflict arrives just before the curtain falls in the form of Rev. Marius Byleveld (Jim Dale), a smiling Samaritan hoping to sweep "Miss Helen" out of heathen...