"It Isn't What She's Done....It's What I Have Done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

                                   Girls, you know, by now, my mind is filled with happy thoughts, when I start thinking about "The Bad Seed."  That is Nancy Kelly at her most hysterical in the original 1954 Broadway production.  The only one who could have outdone Nancy was my mother!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    Recently, I caught, on YouTube, a full length production of the play, done by the Camille Playhouse in October, 2014. This is a theater company, in Bronxville, Texas.  There were some good moments, and the little girl playing Rhoda was chilling, if lacking in stage projection.

                                     However, the most touching performance came from the actress--whose name I can not recall--playing Christine Penmark, the distraught mother.  Even though Kelly won a TONY Award and an Oscar nomination, and OWNS the role, her mannered, demand-she-be-noticed hysterics, while highly suited to the 1950's, now have their own kind of camp appeal.  Next to Veronica Cartwright, no one mined hysteria better than Nancy Kelly.

                                       While the actress in the Texas production might have lacked the shading that a more professional actress would bring, hers came off as the most touching performance, because she subtly, and effectively, drew the audience in, with her anguish.  I was particularly struck by the line I used above--"It isn't what she's done, it's what I've done."  I never thought about what she means by those words, but this performance made me think about it.

                                          Christine is trapped in a situation she cannot even understand, let alone get out of.  I am not sure if the term sociopath was in use, for all the analytical references Monica gives throughout the play.  She has no context to draw on, except in her discussion about murder, with author Reginald Tasker.  He assures her that children are quite capable of committing very clever murders, and he mentions the unseen Bessie Denker, Christine's real mother, who supplies the play its title, as having started her "career" when she was just ten.

                                             Christine knows by now she is the child of Bessie, just as Mrs. Daigle knows Christine is keeping something from her, only her alcohol induced haze does not allow her to figure it out.  There is one mistake Christine makes.  When she says the line "She (meaning Bessie Denker) would have been better off, if she had died young," that is when she gets the germ of the idea for killing both she and Rhoda.  The mistake she makes is attaching too much blame to herself.  I can get her killing Rhoda, but I always wondered why Christine felt she had to kill herself, too.  Guilt is part of it, but so is mistaken biology.

                                               Kenneth Penmark, her husband, appears only in the opening and closing scenes.  Theirs is an obviously happy marriage, and, I suspect, once out of service, they might have wanted to settle down into a routine family life, and maybe even have another child.  Christine mistakenly thinks she cannot give Kenneth that child, because it would be wrong, because, as she sees it, each child, coming out of her womb, would be another Rhoda.

                                                 Now, Rhoda arrived, and is what she is, but there is no guarantee that, were she to have another child, it would be the same.  In the William March novel, when Bessie escapes to Australia, she takes no prisoners, killing all the rest of her children--she had others--save Christine, who hides outside, knowing something is dangerously amiss with her mother and siblings.
Now, she is Bessie's child, and yet she is not a bit like Rhoda.  How many of those children, had they lived, might be like Rhoda?  Surely not all, otherwise anyone this genetically adept at reproducing dangerous sociopaths would ensure, if not a nation, then more crime than is taking place right now.  Which gets us into "Village Of The Damned,"  (or, as John Wyndham titled it "The Midwich Cuckoos") territory, which is not realistic, but more in the sci-fi realm.

                                                Campy as it may now seem, "The Bad Seed," nevertheless, was, at the time, grounded in present day reality.  Christine's heartbreak and guilt are so overwhelming they lead her to a mistaken conclusion about herself.  Rhoda deserved to die, but not she.  I urge you to see on YouTube the Camille Playhouse production, because the actress playing Christine will make you feel this so keenly she is the standout performance in the play.  I thought about Christine for days after having watched this.

                                                  Oh, and the actress playing Monica!  While she does not get the most out of her lines that she should, her appearances are hilarious.  In the first one, I was not sure if this was a man, or a woman.   She seems to be channeling Harvey Korman, as Mother Marcus, on the Carol Burnett spoof, "As The Stomach Turns."

                                                    However--and this is for those of you out there I know who just LOVE the movie--I still say the story should have been allowed to continue long enough for Rhoda to knock the garrulous, annoying Monica, off the roof, the next day, as she alerts us, the viewer, she is planning to!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!