Amy Thompson as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker.

RICHARD W. DIONNE

The build-up’s long, but the payoff’s great.

The Miracle Worker, which opened Sunday at 2nd Story Theatre, is a taught and austere production that banks on a big ending, and delivers it in the form of an epiphanic climax.

The three-act, two-hour show of William Gibson’s 1957 play is about Helen Keller, a blind and deaf woman who learned to overcome her disabilities and to communicate with the world, and did so only because of the tireless attention of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. The play involves 11 characters, but only two are absolutely central: Sullivan, played by Joanne Fayan, and Keller, played by Amy Thompson.

While Thompson never speaks in the play, she does act, and does so well — portraying her detachment from a civilizing world with sounds and gestures that come across as guttural and feral. She also nicely modulates her breathing to reflect her changing state of mind, from contemplation to frustration, more often exhibited in her wild physical fits, kicking her feet and flailing her arms.

It’s an exhausting role, but not one without subtlety.

Over the course of the three acts of the play, directed by Ed Shea, 2nd Story’s artistic director, there’s an evolving change in Thompson’s use of her eyes. At first, they’re completely shut. In the second act, they’re mostly shut. And in the third act, her eyes are open, and while clearly not seeing, they’re metaphorically open to the possibility of seeing through her difficulty.

That’s what this is, an ordeal, which both Keller and Sullivan get through. At times there’s a sense of unglamorous realism to the play. Addressing someone with great special needs is a great deal of work, which can be tedious and time-consuming. That’s imparted here, but not to excess.

There are two persistent and slow-building sources of tension in the play: Sullivan’s challenge in trying to teach Keller language; and Sullivan’s challenge in trying to convince Keller’s family that she can.

Fayan initially plays the part of Sullivan with good-natured earnestness, then doggedness, refusing to give in to the family or to give up on Keller. Both are a battle. And Sullivan fights, increasingly raising her voice, screaming down the naysayers in Keller’s family, and standing up for hope.

And when that battle’s done, Sullivan must fight Keller, not just in will, but in body, since that’s really all Keller knows. Sullivan must control the recalcitrant Keller before she can teach her, or at least tame her.

In one of the play’s few amusing moments, Sullivan emerges from the dining room, disheveled and bedraggled after wrestling at length with Keller in an attempt to teach her table manners. But Sullivan eventually does succeed.

“The room is a wreck,” Sullivan tells Keller’s mother afterward. “But her napkin is folded.”

So Sullivan’s role is also exhausting.

Sullivan uses sign language to teach Keller. She repeatedly spells letters and words into Keller’s hand, after Keller has touched a particular object, hoping Keller can eventually make the connection. Eventually, that connection comes, but very slowly, which is the point of the play: miracles, or any personal progress takes work.

The play is essentially performed in a black-box theater. The floor and walls are black, and so are the props: a dining room table and chairs, a staircase, a few doorways, and, most ominously, a water pump.

The darkness imparts a vague impression of blindness. And if that escapes some audience members, it’s made clear at the beginning of the third act, when there are no lights but there are actors on stage speaking.

The set is designed as an X-shaped cross-walk, with a dining room in one of the recesses, and the audience in the other three. There are no set changes, but scenes do change, smoothly, quickly, artfully. Lights are lowered on actors on one part of the stage and raised on actors on another part. The technique provides nice pacing, although the plot is not fast-paced, and that, again, is part of the point: true accomplishments take time.

Most people are familiar with this classic play. They know the pivotal point, which comes at the very end. It’s when Keller, who had lost her vision and hearing at 18 months, but not before learning a few words, one of which was water, comes in contact with water as Sullivan spells the word in her hand.

That’s the eureka moment. And even when you know Keller’s communication enlightenment is coming, it’s still stirring, inspiring and triumphant when it does. And it doesn’t need a lot of dialogue.

“She knows!” Sullivan says.

And Keller is an instantly changed person, communicating with her parents for the first time, kissing Sullivan, and preparing to salvage what seemed lost — her life.

The Miracle Worker will be presented at 2nd Story Theatre, 28 Market St., Warren, through Dec. 14. Shows are Thursdays (except Thanksgiving) through Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 3 p.m. For tickets, $25, call (401) 247-4200. For more information, visit www.2ndstorytheatre.com