‘Ah, Wilderness!,’ lone comedy
by O’Neill, is excellently done

If you’ve been taking in the great playwright’s work over the past few years at the Irish Classical Theatre Company, those images usually involve tortured psyches, alcoholic misanthropes and a certain brand of yearning hopelessness.

But all those misbegotten moons and endless journeys into night may have gotten to be a bit taxing on local audiences. So, in a very welcome attempt to explore O’Neill’s sliver of a lighter side, ICTC is offering up a production of “Ah, Wilderness!” his lone foray into proper comedy. The show opened Friday night at the Andrews Theatre.

Though it may be maudlin in some spots and preachy in others, O’Neill’s idealistic comedy nonetheless contains a heart of gold that’s as comforting in these gloomy months as a steaming cup of hot cocoa. And in a boisterous production directed by Greg Natale, O’Neill’s words receive an expert and thoroughly engaging treatment.

It’s a bit of the same conceit that makes so many modern-day parents appreciate the “Zits” comic strip, which chronicles the habits of a similarly clueless teenager.

As Richard, the spectacularly named Napoleon achieves just the right balance of self-aggrandizing angst and wide-eyed ingenuousness. He is fond of a certain slack-jawed stare, which he employs a little too readily after delivering what his character believes are particularly

earth-shattering insights. But Napoleon plays O’Neill’s well-placed comic lines for every laugh they’re worth and thus effortlessly endears himself both to his fictional family and his actual audience. Remember his name — as if you could forget it.

Dan Walker, as O’Neill’s oft-bumbling and lovable father figure Nat, turns in a performance of stunning depth and magnanimity. A similarly disarming if somewhat more understated performance comes from Kristen Tripp-Kelley as the warm-as-apple-pie Aunt Lily.

Richard Wesp is on top of his game as the family’s requisite drunk Uncle Sid, as are, in lesser roles, the inimitable Gerry Maher and his daughter Eliza Hayes Maher, who camps it up to high heaven in her only scene in the final act.

Kelli Bocock-Natale, whose New England accent occasionally drifts below the Mason-Dixon line, is nonetheless endlessly amusing and compelling as matriarch Essie Miller. Others in the cast are a bit uneven, but it barely affects the overall feel of the production.

Lynne Koscielniak’s set is particularly effective here, with several creative touches (chairs strewn about to represent the rocky seaside, the barest insinuation of window frames). Brian Cavanagh’s lighting, Tom Makar’s sound design, and Kate E. Palame’s costumes each play their part in the production’s shining success.

cdabkowski@buffnews.com

AH, WILDERNESS!
by Anthony Chase, ARTVOICE

It is often observed that Eugene O’Neill never stayed with any one dramatic style long enough to become its true master. And yet, through the power of his theatrical vision, he ignited American drama and produced an astoundingly versatile range of plays. He experimented his way though our nation’s first important tragic drama, through expressionistic allegories and revisions of the ancient Greek classics. Still among the many plays he wrote in his long and remarkable career, there is only one lone comedy, Ah, Wilderness!

The Irish Classical Theatre company has an understandable affinity for Irish American O’Neill. They’ve taken on his expressionistic Emperor Jones and his companion odes to gloom and disillusionment, A Moon for the Misbegotten and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. With Ah, Wilderness! the company happily makes its most successful foray into O’Neill territory yet with a production that is tremendously appealing and smart, despite uneven acting.

Set on the Fourth of July in 1906, the play centers on the coming of age of 17-year-old Richard, who sees himself as a poet and a radical and uses the occasion of the summer holiday for an adolescent rebellion punctuated by a misunderstanding with his life’s first sweetheart. Everything that ensues is essentially innocent, but thrown into the frenzy of high drama when Richard’s mother, Essie, exerts her parental concern.

While Ah, Wilderness! is unique among O’Neill’s works for its comic tone, it does take us to familiar O’Neill territory. Here we find ourselves in the same Irish-American enclave of small-town Connecticut that provides the settings for Long Day’s Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Even the characters are familiar. Uncle Sid, like Jamie Tyrone, wastes himself in alcohol, gambling, and women of easy virtue. Young Richard, like Edmund in Long Day’s Journey, reads the decadent poets and yearns for his intellectual freedom. (The play’s title is borrowed from Edward FitzGerald’s collection of translated Persian poems, Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, one of Richard’s favorite books).

But here we do not find a family in torment. Human imperfection is a source of endearment in this play, rather than of ruin. In Ah, Wilderness!, love endures and prevails, and everyone ends happily.

To focus on the positive in the very satisfying ICTC production, young Louis Napoleon makes a wonderfully confident debut as Richard. He plays the role with a marvelous mixture of dire earnestness and boyish naïveté, whether spouting poetry and politics intended to shock his parents, or flailing in a barroom, a victim of his own inexperience with booze.

As his parents, Nat and Essie Miller, Dan Walker and Kelli Bocock-Natale, exude equal and ample doses of parental affection and anxiety, in roles I once saw played by those definitive interpreters of O’Neill’s work, Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst. The warm banter between the two vividly recalls devoted married couples in all our families, and while in her speech Bocock-Natale’s Essie inexplicably seems to hail from the Pine Tree State of Maine, both pleasingly create characters that are simultaneously classic comic types and very real.

Kristen Tripp Kelley gives a superb performance as Nat’s spinster sister, Aunt Lily. Looking refined and lovely in period clothes and hairstyle, she projects motherly love as a woman who will never know true romance or motherhood. It is a beautiful portrayal and adds a great deal to the substance of this production.

Andrea Andolina successfully creates a classic O’Neill type in the role of Belle, the pretty prostitute who has her standards and her dignity. Andolina provides comic verve to the plot’s most dicey complication without ever going over the top. It is a nicely contoured performance.

Greg Natale’s direction keeps the production’s uneven elements in admirable balance, allowing its strengths to dominate and its failings to be forgiven. He maintains an even pace and tone, and make effective use of the circular stage at the Andrews Theatre. The beauty of the production is amplified by Lynne Koscielniak’s handsome and economical set, Brian Cavanagh’s lighting, Tom Makar’s sound design, and especially by Kate E. Palame’s highly effective period costumes.