A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, directed by Laird Williamson. American Conservatory Theater, 415 Geary Street, San Francisco, CA, 28 April-29 May 2005.

Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten exerts considerable demands on directors and actors alike: tell the story of a man vengefully drinking himself to death—and make it funny. The play, of course, has a double-exigency. It began with the story of the tenant-farmer, the Standard Oil billionaire, and pigs wallowing in an ice pond told by Edmund in Long Day's Journey into Night. And it was also meant as an elegy for Jamie O'Neill, who died alone and blind from alcoholism in a New Jersey sanitarium in 1923. The American Conservatory Theater's revival of O'Neill's play, under the direction of Laird Williamson, was simultaneously buoyed up and bedeviled by this collision of comedy and tragedy. The first two acts, which center on the shenanigans of the Hogans, were wonderful. Robin Weigert and Raye Birk played the Irish farmers with perfect comic timing (though with occasional problems with their brogue). Andy Butterfield as Mike Hogan and David Arrow as Harder delivered fine complementary roles. The second two acts, which revolve around the confession and absolution of Jim Tyrone, were noticeably weaker though. Moreover, Marco Barricelli's portrayal of Jim was uneven, drifting between tragic pathos and melodramatic self-pitying.

Robert Mark Morgan's scenery was impressive—continuing a long line of wonderful stage design at ACT. Morgan's setting evoked the dilapidated farmhouse of the play through wooden beams and old furniture. Walls were eliminated so actors could move freely and so audiences could be privy to the play's private scenes: Jim's eavesdropping on the encounter between Hogan and Harder; Josie's misery when Jim doesn't keep their date. Overhead was suspended a patchwork of screens and paneling with diverse—and often delicate—designs that suggested the front of the farmhouse. It looked to have been cobbled together out of remnants of dozens of Connecticut farms; and consequently, it gestured toward the class distinctions at work in the feud between Harder and Hogan. At the same time, it hung directly overhead, suggesting the impending collapse of Hogan's hopes for Jim and his daughter. And this expressionism was complemented by the fencing that surrounded the stage—thin, jagged stakes held loosely together by old wire—which suggested the tattered psyche of Jim.

Robin Weigert authored the most compelling performance of the production with her portrayal of Josie Hogan. When Weigert first appears onstage, she moved effortlessly between bullying and mothering her brother Mike, alternately swatting him on the head and tucking in his shirt. Such roughhousing stood in direct contrast to the nervousness and vulnerability that Weigert evinced during the scenes between Josie and Jim. Her body wilted toward him, often to Josie's surprise, whenever he complimented her or recited lines of poetry; she shuddered in revulsion when he told the story of sharing his room on the train back from the West Coast with a hooker—with his mother's coffin in the next compartment. And Weigert was at her best during the encounter between Hogan, Harder, and herself. She wrenched Harder around by the collar, and she whipped his riding crop through the air with a look of surprised eagerness on her face. Her Josie was strong and yet easily hurt, loud and even crass and yet agonizingly shy—all the complexity that O'Neill could have imagined in the character.

And close behind Weigert's Josie was Raye Birk's cantankerous—and somehow touching—Phil Hogan. Birk threw himself into the clowning of O'Neill's tenant-farmer. When he and Josie accosted Harder, Birk stormed around the stage, blustering mightily, his eyes bulging in exaggerated reaction to whatever Harder managed to stammer. Birk was able to be simultaneously outraged (for Harder) and delighted (for the audience)—and his comic timing was impeccable, continually cutting off Harder's rejoinders. And later, when he comes home "drunk" from the inn, Birk stumbles around the stage, missing steps and colliding with all manner of obstacles; and his feigned roundhouse intended for Jim nearly deposits him on the seat of his pants. Throughout all of this buffoonery, though, Birk kept the role from becoming caricature. He was able to reveal to the audience—through a look away when Josie tried to hide her hurt at Jim's standing her up, through a slumped shoulder when she talked about exacting revenge on Jim—that Hogan's bluster was mostly bark. He made Hogan sympathetic, despite the unkind words that O'Neill puts in his mouth; and he revealed a father sincerely, though clumsily, chasing his daughter's happiness.

Marco Barricelli's Jim Tyrone was considerably less engaging, though it's not clear if the shortcomings were results of his performance or miscasting. Barricelli's Stanley Kowalski-build has served him well while playing high-testosterone characters during past seasons at ACT—Ricky Roma from David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross and Teach from Mamet's American Buffalo. His substantial frame—and possibly my familiarity with his past work—belied the history of alcoholic binging that leads up to the night spent in Josie's arms. He wasn't convincing portraying a man drinking himself to death. And Barricelli seemed uncomfortable in the role: some of the dialogue was more maudlin than moving. Some of these problems may have as much to do with the character. O'Neill devotes most of the first two acts to the Hogans and gives audiences little chance to develop sympathy for Jim before he confesses his sins. And the longer Barricelli was onstage, the better his performance became. His sudden remembering—and momentary disavowal—of the night spent with Josie was particularly powerful: it suggested a tormented psyche desperately seeking refuge, even if in oblivion.

The final act of A Moon for the Misbegotten exemplifies ACT's revival of the play. The act opens with Jim asleep in Josie's arms while she and Hogan fall into renewed—and temporarily more serious—bickering. Weigert and Birk, in other words, dominate the stage here—and throughout the play—with their tumultuous and tender performance of Josie and Phil Hogan. By contrast, Barricelli's Jim fades into the background, though this may be fitting since he is already "dead," as Josie remarks. Ultimately, we are left with more sadness and sympathy for the two tenant-farmers than for O'Neill's lost brother. And while we can console ourselves with the knowledge that father and daughter will be planning their schemes and playing their tricks well into the future, we cannot help but know that they are—at least as much as Jim Tyrone—truly misbegotten.

J. Chris Westgate
University of California, Davis

 

Desire Under the Elms, directed by Janos Szasz. American Repertory Theatre, Loeb Drama Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 20 May 2005.

Although there was much moving and skillful acting in this performance, and although the production held my attention, this was a most strange and sometimes bizarre presentation that took great liberties with Eugene O'Neill's text and stage directions. These changes raise the question of how far a director may go in altering the intent and text of a playwright, since this production when all is said was more disturbing than uplifting, and more dissatisfying than entertaining.

At any time, theater is an immediate, contemporary art, and thus most patrons of the theater would readily grant the director the right to enhance the relevance of old plays by changing the venue, the costumes, the time period, deepening the meaning by adding significant and resonant symbolism, and by other devices. For example, there have been contemporary performances of Elizabethan dramas, dripping with murder and gore, that have been symbolically enriched by having an actor zealously chopping chunks of meat at the same time someone is being butchered offstage. But how far can a director go in altering a play?

Janos Szasz, a well-known director of drama and film, seems to have pushed the envelope in his production of Desire Under the Elms. First, he introduced new scenes and dropped some that were in the text. He continually replaced O'Neill's stage directions with his own ideas of how the action should be played. On many occasions, he staged symbolic blocking, having actors speak to the audience instead of to each other, suggesting their alienation. At other times, actors talk to one another from thirty feet apart, giving physical evidence of their emotional distance. He has a number of anachronisms in his props and costumes that detract from the credibility of the play and undermine the play's artistic unity. These many changes and bizarre characteristics place the action of the drama hovering precariously between O'Neill's realism and an expressionist or absurd work. The production seems to be neither fish nor fowl, since the many alterations have produced a play whose artistic nature is uncertain, but whose philosophy is deeply pessimistic. In this regard, Mr. Szasz greatly changed the ending of O'Neill's drama. In this version love does not bind Abby and Eben in a transcendent and permanent relationship. As the drama ends they rest on their knees looking in opposite directions into the darkness, totally unreconciled and unredeemed, staring into the meaningless gloom of their hopeless lives, as presented in this version.

Clearly, this production is not the play that O'Neill wrote, but an adaptation. The set did not contain the pretty New England farm and farmhouse that the characters vie to possess. The set was almost an abstract or expressionistic idea of what the farm was like in the mind of a severe moralist. For one, there was not a leaf or a green plant, or a fertile patch of soil on the stage. The stage was littered with piles of rocks and stretches of brown sand or a covering of small brown pebbles. It was apparent that the set designer Riccardo Hernandez had elevated the stones that O'Neill describes into a major symbol of sterility and lack of spirituality. The two elms that O'Neill lavishly describes in act 1 were banished to stage left rear, squeezed, leafless and branch-less, next to an abandoned pick-up truck from the 1940s. The trees were as dry and as lifeless as the stage rocks. O'Neill's cute farmhouse was represented by a single façade of a drab farmhouse suspended from the stage ceiling at a forty-five degree angle. The surreal nature of this set was made even clearer when this façade folded to become only a flat roof on the stage ceiling under which the dramatic action was presented throughout the play. In summary, the set suggested a bleak, sterile, and dry world more reminiscent of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot than that of O'Neill's play. As if the set were not depressing enough, the audience, prior to the play's beginning, had to listen to three baleful electronic notes played at different places in the musical scale that produced a monotonous mournful sound familiar to weird films populated with extra-terrestrial villains. Sound designer was David Remedios.

The mention of Samuel Beckett is exceedingly relevant. In the program notes for the production, Director Szasz praised the sandy and rocky set of Mr. Hernandez since he "wanted to create a kind of rocky no-man's-land that would give the audience the feeling of stepping into a landscape from a play by Samuel Beckett." Why, may we ask, does every playwright have to write and think like Samuel Beckett? Desire Under the Elms, among other things, is about love and how love can give meaning to our lives, but this production largely and sadly omitted the subject. If Mr. Szasz admires Beckett so much why didn't he put on a Beckett play instead of forcing his views upon O'Neill? The drama is all the more enriched when many flowers bloom.

In the same program notes, Mr. Szasz explains his use of rocks in his set: "The whole spirit of the play comes from those stones. Everybody in the play is trying to break through the stone walls they've built around themselves and each other. In the production I'm using music that reminds me of rocks and earth. Nothing sensual or erotic. Dry music—music that sounds like ghosts trying to break through the earth." Mr. Ssasz is correct in asserting that the characters are imprisoned within their own egos and within their own mercenary obsessions. But the great point that Mr. Szasz does not seem to appreciate is that Abbie and Eben are saved by the liberating power of love, and given a new and favorable view of their destinies, while the other characters languish in their frustrations and remain lost in their fruitless search for gold that they think will give them happiness. As a poet once said: "Only the lovers are winners in life; everyone else loses.

Despite the serious shortcomings of this production, the audience seemed very pleased with it, owing, perhaps, to the fact that the actors gave heartfelt and sincere performances. My attention to the production was also sustained by the skills of the actors who gave compelling performances. Particularly challenged was Amelia Campbell, who played Abbie Putnam. Despite her entrance wearing a modern white chemical fabric coat and pulling a modern wheeled airline suitcase in the 1850s, she gave a good portrayal of the lusty, aggressive woman who saves herself by falling in love with Eben Cabot. Mickey Solis, playing Eben Cabot, was a good foil to Ms. Campbell, finally learning that Abbie's love is worth more than the farm he covets. Raymond J. Barry as the patriarchal Ephraim Cabot gave a vigorous portrayal of a man whose happiness is greatly restricted because of the false gods he worships. Last, Shawtane Monroe Bowen as Simeon Cabot and Peter Cambor as Peter Cabot, Eben's brothers, effectively portrayed the loveless louts who greatly resemble the cows they tend. In short the sincerity and fervor of the skilled cast gave this production the emotional authenticity of living people. As for the direction, Mr. Szasz would have done well if he had either changed the name of the production or described it as an adaptation. Then he could do what he wants and avoid criticism. For example, in Paris this fall, the Odeon Theatre mounted a production called Le Viol or "the rape." The announcement then said "après de Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare." Can anyone quarrel with this director's treatment of his source?

Dr. Robert Simpson McLean
Emeritus, City University of New York

 

A Touch of the Poet, directed by Doug Hughes. Roundabout Theater Company, Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, New York City, New York, 8 December 2006.

A Touch of the Poet is not one of Eugene O'Neill's great plays; however, it is an interesting work containing intriguing characters, sprightly dialogues, and moving dramatic scenes, and it also foreshadows some of the themes and characters of the author's later great plays such as The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey into Night. The recent production by the Roundabout Theater Company starring the redoubtable Gabriel Byrne as Cornelius Melody was an entertaining and absorbing work despite the fact that a smaller, more intimate theater might have been a better setting than the cavernous Studio 54, home of many musicals. Perhaps the dimensions of Studio 54, which seats almost a thousand people, partly explains the occasional inaudibility of the actors' voices, particularly in small, intimate scenes.

Gabriel Byrne and Emily Bergl in the Roundabout Theatre Company's production of A Touch of the Poet at Studio 54, directed by Doug Hughes. Photo credit: Joan Marcus, 2005.

In addition, Set Designer Santo Loquasto indulged his fecund imagination to build an expansive set that did not enhance or express the theme of the play. Such a large set converted the small shabby tavern of O'Neill's text operated incongruously by the vainglorious Major Cornelius Melody, who served with honor under the Duke of Wellington in Spain, into what seemed like a huge run-down English country home. The three stage walls were lined with walnut-stained planking from the stage floor to high in the flies, seemingly extending to the unseen roof. In stage center stood a tall dark wooden structure that housed the unseen upstairs bedrooms. In front of the structure stood a large fireplace with a huge wooden mantle topped by candles, an oval mirror, and some oil lamps. Next to the fireplace was a large banquet table surrounded by wooden ladder-back chairs of the period, and on stage right stood two other dining tables with similar chairs.

Veteran actor Gabriel Byrne gave the most striking performance in the drama. His tall, military physique, his deep resonant voice, and his commanding tone made him a perfect vehicle to portray the vain, arrogant Irish immigrant who spends his life as the owner of a deteriorating inn, while he lives his false dream of being a landed gentleman looking down on his wife and daughter whom he sees as low-bred. Mr. Byrne plays his role well. He scorns, he rebukes, he snarls, he struts, he sneers, he makes grand sweeping gestures, and generally behaves in a way that Major Cornelius Melody thinks a gentleman should act. He also portrays a good Byronic hero, standing before a mirror, admiring himself, while reciting self-expressive lines from Lord Byron's Childe Harold: "I have not loved the World, nor the World me; / I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed / To its idolatries a patient knee, / [. . ] in the crowd / They could not deem me one of such—I stood / Among them, but not of them [. . .]." Mr. Byrne ended his recitation by emphatically underscoring Melody's alienation: "`Among them, but not of them.' By the Eternal, that expresses it! Thank God for you, Lord Byron—poet and nobleman who made of his disdain immortal music!"

Mr. Byrne, in short, was born for the role. Moreover, in his quarrels with his outspoken daughter Sara, Mr. Byrne spoke his lines well, lines that foreshadow the family battles that make the searing quarrels so memorable in Long Day's Journey into Night, quarrels that end in patterns of reconciliation. In the final conversion scene after Con Melody is beaten and his beautiful scarlet uniform torn and dirtied in the battle against the police and Harford's men, Mr. Byrne convincingly portrays a man who has seen the folly of his ways, becomes remorseful over his treatment of his wife and daughter and ashamed of his rejection of both his seedy Irish friends and of his Irish identity. He is born again, so to speak, and comes to his senses, creating jubiliation in his family and in his inn.

Mr. Byrne's leading role in A Touch of a Poet is his second major O'Neill role having recently played James Tyrone, Jr. in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Will we soon see a major production of The Iceman Cometh or of Long Day's Journey into Night with Mr. Byrne in a leading role?

Ms. Emily Bergl made a good Sara Melody. Her natural assets, her beautiful Irish face and red hair, her pretty figure, and her soft voice when she is not talking to her father, and her attractive cleavage go far to explain why she successfully seduced Simon Harford. In her role Ms. Bergl gave a heartfelt performance of an attractive young woman who is angry with her father for being a selfish idle gentleman while her mother and she must work their fingers to the bone to provide food for his prize mare. She also demonstrates that she is a strong young woman in love and most eager to obtain her loved one. Following her seduction of Simon, Ms. Bergl was most impressive when she came quietly down the staircase in her nightdress with her hair let down upon her shoulders, glowing radiantly after achieving her heart's desire.

Ms. Dearbhla Molloy played the luckless Nora Melody whose lot in life is hard since her ungrateful husband does not respect her. She shows her low status by appearing on stage in a work apron and scrubbing floors and doing other menial work. Ms. Molloy was convincing in her portrayal of a woman who loves her husband and thinks that he treats her the way he does because he cannot help being a gentleman. All the minor characters in the drama acquitted themselves well. Mr. Daniel Stewart Sherman as Mickey Malloy, Major Melody's barkeeper, portrays a credible lackey who plays up to Major Melody in order to drink his whiskey and laugh behind his back. Similarly, Mr. Byron Jennings as Jamie Cregan, a former corporal under Major Melody in the Battle of Talavera, also panders to Melody in order to obtain favors. Mr. Ciaran O'Reilly and Randall Newsome as Dan Roche and Paddy O'Dowd complete the list of Irish barroom rowdies and comedians, who drink and dance and sing in glorious alcoholic forgetfulness.

Especially interesting and attractive was Ms. Kathyrn Meisle as the stunningly beautiful Ms. Deborah Harford, mother of the unseen Simon Harford who lies upstairs in a bedroom of the inn recuperating from an illness. Ms. Meisle gave a great portrayal of a rich upper-class Yankee who hates the tavern and everyone in it, but has too much class to show it. Only when provoked after Melody kisses her does she protest the trespass by expressing contempt for Melody and his whiskey breath. Also interesting is O'Neill's scene in which Mrs. Harford and Sara Melody engage in a conversational duel that was most artful as both ladies, seeing the other as the enemy, played the game of sexual politics. Last, Mr. John Horton, as Nicholas Gadsby, Mr. Harford's attorney, who visits Con Melody to buy him off and end the relationship between Sara and his son, was great fun as Roche and O'Dowd toss the lawyer out the door. This scene is but one example of the Irish versus Yankee theme that runs throughout the play and in other O'Neill plays as well.

Mr. Loquasto also served as costume designer, and did a creditable job. Undoubtedly, Con Melody's brilliant scarlet jacket and white pants, gold epaulets, and black boots were standard issue, British Army, 1809, and Mr. Byrne looked resplendent in his uniform. The ladies in the cast, with the exception of Mrs. Melody, were also well turned out by Mr. Loquasto. Ms. Beryl's pretty beige period frock with a waistline just below her bosom and the hem reaching to the floor was most attractive for a young woman, and Ms. Meisle's elegant gown displayed the beauty of the wearer as well as her high social status.

A word should be said about the music in the play. Mr. David Van Tieghem was responsible for the original music that was most effective in the production. Music punctuated the performance at crucial places conveying a symbolic resonant accompaniment to the stage action. The play opened with what appeared to be a piper playing an air, after which a staccato military drumbeat sounded from behind the stage. The piper was David Power, who was playing uillean pipes. This instrument, invented in Ireland in the eighteenth century, is a type of bagpipe that is not mouth-blown but has a small bellows under the player's right arm. The performer must be seated and it cannot be played outdoors because of the reduced air. The uillean pipes were played beautifully by Mr. Power and gave the play an authentic Irish tone.

Dr. Robert Simpson McLean
Emeritus, City University of New York

 

"Anna Christie," directed by Molly Smith. Arena Theatre Company, Washington, D.C., 6 May-19 June 2005.

Even by the playwright, "Anna Christie" is a much-underrated play,. O'Neill disowned the drama in his mature years (see his letter to Lawrence Langner, 24 Aug. 1941) because the voice of Anna was alien to him. When he wrote the play, he was heavily under the influence of Susan Glaspell and other Provincetown feminists. His earlier one-acts had shown a romanticized attitude toward prostitutes, but the later plays, notably The Iceman Cometh, took a bleaker view. Some modern readers have interpreted the work as a near tragedy, a play with scope and vision, peopled with lost souls who cling to a dream they may never realize. Director Molly Smith found far more melodrama than tragedy and, except for Chris, the main characters had little dimension—even for a romance. On balance, there were two dramas on the Arena stage—O'Neill's play and the director's struggle with the text, which was by far the more interesting.

The creative team deserves much praise for their design interpretations. Bill C. Ray's staging was a little too upscale for verisimilitude but attractive to the eye. That is a welcome corrective. Sometimes the initial scenes of O'Neill's plays are hard on contemporary audiences because the sets are so unpleasant: "shabby," "small," "dark" are common stage descriptions. Ray suspended a large opaque window in a frame from the flies; it announced Johnny's Spirits and Lager in backward letters—to distinguish between the inside and outside of the tavern. To check the feeling of spaciousness, the bar itself cut the stage in half, with Chris moving back and forth between the saloon and the family room. The many black streamers hanging from the flies were interesting but incomprehensible. For set changes, stage hands dressed as sailors moved in dimmed lighting, tossing chairs to each other and relocating crates to the sound of sea music. The lighting by Michael Gilliam simulated waves on the prow of the ship in the second act. Continual fog, a mournful cello (Eric Shim, music), and gull cries created a credible sea atmosphere. Eventually the upscale bar and deck were transformed into the shabby cabin of the coal barge—but by then the audience was ready to enter O'Neill's world on his terms.

Another pleasant surprise was Kevin Tighe as Chris. There has been an unappealing, even repugnant quality about past interpretations of the barge captain, but it was obvious from his entrance how sexy and fit this Chris had once been despite Tighe's white hair. The casting provided a backstory, a reason the attractive Chris might have neglected his daughter and wife. At the end when he and Mat Burke signed on to the same ship, you could recognize in the young man another Chris and the cycle starting all over again. Tighe entered in dirty-looking clothes and baggy gray pants. Tighe is perhaps the first performer to transform the "Josephine" ditty from an annoying repetition to an interesting mannerism. He did a jig to it, made it funny and cheerful. When he ordered drinks all around, it was easy to believe in his generosity and loneliness.

It was also easy to see why he was attractive to Marthy Owen and why—as a man who had had more than his share of women—he could let her go so easily. Anne Scurria was an exceptional Marthy Owen, the barge rat with a heart of gold. She certainly looked the role. Her gray-brown hair indicated a woman in her 40s or 50s. The hem hanging down an old ripped sweater signaled a disregard for appearances, perhaps an alcoholic depression. Scurria had a worn looking body but a pretty face. Like Chris, her Marthy seemed to be a woman with a colorful past, which Anna sensed when she bought Marthy a drink. Scurria gave breadth to a character who too often has been played for laughs.

The casting of Anna and Mat Burke, however, was problematic. With her very blond hair, the beautiful Sara Surrey looked too healthy and wholesome to play the ailing prostitute. While her Anna might have just been released from the hospital, after a good night's rest and a meal, there was no doubt she could return to the brothel and thrive. The tragic dimension essential to the play wasn't even a hint.

Surrey did make the right gestures. She stroked her ugly feathered hat, which she obviously treasured as finery, and coughed continually. As Chris entered the family room of the bar, she stood, then backed away from him while he froze, wonderstruck. Once Chris exited, she cried, "I can't stand this," placing her cheek on her shoulder and rocking like a little girl. But she always seemed less a fallen woman than a community college co-ed who had a rough weekend. In the script, Anna is beautiful but on the verge of collapse, holding herself together by will power alone.

Transformed by a change of clothing, the Anna in the second act was even healthier. It was obvious that this Anna could easily shove Mat Burke and knock him unconscious. By the third act (after intermission), the new Anna, now in a skirt, had become cranky, sarcastic, and unpleasant. But she was not a woman fighting for her life. In this act, O'Neill, perhaps influenced by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bryant, Neith Boyce, even Mabel Dodge, wrote a powerful feminist declaration. Anna tells the men: "You can go to hell, both of you! [. . .] You're just like all the rest of them [. . .]. You'd think I was a piece of furniture. [. . .] Nobody owns me, see?—`cepting myself. [. . .] I ain't asking either of you for a living. I can make it myself—one way or other [. . .]." Surrey delivered it flat, making it sound like rehashed complaints.

Even more disappointing than Anna was Dan Snook as Mat Burke. He was a parody, an egocentric jock with not an iota of the heroic. Despite his shortcomings, which became more evident as the play progressed, the first encounter between Anna and Mat was affecting, although not transcendent. It is very powerful in the script, and performers like Liam Neeson have made Mat's loneliness almost palpable; his discovery of Anna, a profoundly moving moment. O'Neill wrote a character who is inarticulate, stumbling to find the words for the emotions he feels. This Mat just seemed dumb and often out of character. After his three-day ordeal at sea, he was barely tired. The audience read him as a clown and laughed often. Snook played up to them with a supply of canned reactions and curious choices. When Anna and Mat fought, he fell on top of her and remained there as though they were about to make love. More than artificial and unrealistic, the scene was unsettling, as though it had been imported from another play.

Because Tighe offered such a powerful interpretation, there were more sparks between Chris and Mat than between the lovers. Snook's first encounter with Tighe —as Mat and Chris meet—elevated the level of performances. This was true in the final scenes as well, which shifted the dramatic balance away from Anna.

At the close of the play, it was clear that the production belonged to Kevin Tighe. By the fourth act, Chris was greatly transformed. The vibrant captain from act 1 had become the defeated bo'sun of a commercial vessel. Throughout the play, the barge captain bewailed the evil fate dogging him and his family, addressing his comments about the "dirty ol' devil sea" directly to the audience rather than muttering them. This adoption of Chris as a choral figure, interpreting the text, restored a little of the tragic scope. The play closed with Tighe's despair and his questioning of God. After delivering the final line, "Blackest curse strike me," Tighe looked around and waited. He had captured what O'Neill termed the comma at the close—the indication that the story of "Anna Christie" remains unfinished and probably does not have a happy ending.

Glenda Frank
Fashion Institute of Technology, NYC