Ah, Wilderness!
Eugene
O’Neill
Can a
coming-of-age story of a sixteen-year-old boy in 1906 Waterbury, Connecticut
still speak to a 21st Century audience? When it is Ah, Wilderness,
the only comedy and still most-widely produced and loved of all Eugene
O’Neill’s plays, as being currently excellently and imaginatively revived by
American Conservatory Theatre, the answer is a resounding, “Yes!” This is a play brimming over with one
family’s shared moments of laughing with and laughing at each other, with
unquestioned love and recurring exasperations existing side by side, and where
crises feel in the moment so monumentally terrible only to become tomorrow’s
family lore.
The
Millers are in many ways an Every Family, at least that family most people
either remember or dream about being able to remember. In many ways, there is nothing special or
extraordinary about them; and like the families in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, that is what helps them to be so timeless a century later.
Richard
is an intense reader of authors his mother does not approve and his father
quietly admires (Ibsen, Shaw. Wilde, Swinburne, and Khayyam). He is an emotional roller coaster quick to
jump on the soapbox to rail against the likes of July the 4th or to
exit dramatically “out into the night” (even in broad daylight) after declaring
like a Hamlet, “I am a pessimist.”
Thomas Stagnitta plays to perfect pitch this 16-year-old boy
heads-over-heels in love who only operates on the extreme ends of any scale during
his waking hours. He is aw-shucks sweet
in one moment and is a rebellious cyclone the next. He is puppy cute and all-too-funny in his
first night of drinking and trying to hold his own with a lady of the night, a street
sexy Caitlan Taylor who shows heart and humor toward her wooer. Richard is measurably green around the gills
the next morning in ways we all remember too well from our wilder youth and and
sincere to the core in his resolution never to venture down sin’s paths again. Mr. Stagnitta endears himself to an audience
with a performance that is genuine, calculated yet natural, and wonderful to
behold.
Richard’s
love focus is Muriel, herself known to swing in teenage, up and down cycles of
emotions as played by Rosa Palmeri. Together,
they show in their entire beings that youthful magnetism and pull toward each other
where neck veins pop, eyes explode in size, and smiles are bigger than quarter
moons. How quickly such feelings turn
into repulsed hurt and stubborn with folded-arm resolution never to see each
other again as soon as a bump occurs along the way. Such happens when Thomas receives a letter
written by Muriel under her father’s demanding eye [the so-pompous, so stern in
manner, Adrian Roberts] renouncing her love of Richard). Of course, the two young lovers soon forgive
all in a flash of brightened faces and tentative, too-funny first kiss.
Richard’s
dad Nat Miller is the incomparable Anthony Fusco, showing dozens of nuanced
ways to portray a father’s exasperation at his son’s latest outburst, his attempts
at humor that lead to everyone else rolling knowing eyes, and his words of tenderness
that finally gets through a son’s seemingly tough but vulnerable exterior. Messieurs Stagnitta and Fusco are
particularly at their acting best as Nat gingerly tiptoes into a facts of life
discussion while Richard freezes into a statue with a look of horror, followed
by each doing all he can to convince the other that it is OK to drop the
subject as now done.
Other family members are also masterfully brought to life by this seasoned cast. Rachel Ticotin is Richard’s overly proper, mother-hen doting, conservatively cautious mother Essie. The overseer of the household and family is constantly correcting the manners and habits of her children and her husband, demanding Nat do his fatherly duties in punishing Richard’s straying, and then swooping immediately in to protect her poor baby from any mean words or actions by Nat or anyone else. Margo Hall is the stock spinster character who is the good-hearted, live-in aunt and sister to Nat, Lily Miller, who quietly and knowingly observes all family goings-on, who advises only if asked, and is quickly apologetic for “being such burden.” She also daily says ‘no’ to the ongoing marriage proposals of her twenty-plus-year beau, Sid Davis, brother to Lily, everyone’s favorite, amiable uncle who courts too much the bottle and admits himself to being “a no-good bum.” Dan Hiatt is deliciously funny as he comes to the July 4th family dinner table totally soused, has a battle with the soupspoon, and eventually stumbles off for a needed nap, exiting as a one-man comedy show.
While
Michael McIntire, Christina Liang, and Brandin Francis Osborne round out the
rest of the family clan in not-too-noticeable performances as brothers Arthur
and Tommy and sister Mildred, Jennifer Reddish wins several spontaneous,
audience applauds as the clumsy Irish maid who plops food on the table as if
handling sacks of flour and who only knows how to run, never walk, in and out
of the dining room.
Beyond
excellent performances by the cast, what makes this Ah Wilderness special is the ways Director Casey Stangl has made its
story of an All-American family much more universal than just a nostalgic,
outdated slice of 1906 life. By deciding
to use a multi-racial cast, Mr. Stangl takes this story away from one tradition
and shows that the teenage angst, family squabbles, parent-child struggles
along with idea that it is at home where unconditional love most firmly exists
to overlook and overcome most of the quirks and issues that land in all
families of every kind. Also, the simple
but stunning framed hint of a house by Ralph Funicello no longer just suggests
the small-town Connecticut of yesteryear but can translate to many family’s
homes, in many locations of the U.S.
While Jessie Amoroso’s wonderful costumes do speak authentically of the
turn-of-the-last-century, there is still a timelessness to the set, the family,
and the situations the family faces that can lead a 21st Century
audience to remember and/or to hope for a family where true fondness,
acceptance of foibles and sins, and genuine love really do exist.
Congratulations
to American Conservatory Theatre for reminding us all of such a family.
Rating: 5
E’s
Ah Wilderness continues at the Geary stage of
American Conservatory Theatre through November 8, 2016. Tickets are available at http://act-sf.org
or by calling the box office 415-749-2228.
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