Ah, Wilderness!

Abstract

Ah, Wilderness!, that rare bird, an O'Neill comedy, ends with the young Richard Miller looking forward to a bright future after learning a life lesson that O'Neill never experienced in his youth. Based loosely on the prosperous Rippin and McGinley families, who lived in Eugene O'Neill's neighborhood during his New London boyhood, Ah Wilderness! portrays the upbringing that O'Neill never had but perhaps longed for, especially after his youth lapsed and he began to reflect upon the dysfunctionality of his early life. Natalie Abrahami's production at London's Young Vic radically altered O'Neill's nostalgic and whimsical portrait of his adolescence by summoning the ghost of O'Neill to haunt his original memory play.Abrahami's revision began with cutting the script to a mere one-and-a-half hours. She also disregarded the realistic set design described in O'Neill's copious stage directions, staging instead the abstraction of a ruined home into which the audience intruded. As we step into the theater, we enter an almost dreamlike reality in which a dilapidated house has nearly succumbed to sand dunes after years of neglect. It was as if the sands of time have literally piled upon the stage, and the image is surely meant to evoke the first and perhaps happiest home O'Neill had owned as an adult, the former Life-Saving Service station at Peaked Hill Bar, which collapsed and washed into the sea a decade later, a year before the writing of Ah, Wilderness!Calling on the quintessential memory play of the twentieth century—Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie—Abrahami created a narrator character (played by David Annen), who walked the line between observer and actor throughout the performance. He was a storyteller who appeared to be reliving his past as both a silent spectator and an active participant. During the opening scene, costumed as O'Neill, Annen recited the stage directions so meticulously worked out by the playwright whom he was ghosting, to borrow Marvin Carlson's term. With occasional interjections into the story as Mr. McComber and George, the bartender, Annen captured the uncanny feeling of watching O'Neill inhabit the world of his creation. The O'Neill character at times even seemed to be writing the play as the action was unfolding.This framing of the play through the eyes of a character who represents the author opened up a wider inquiry into the autobiographical nature of Ah, Wilderness! The production reiterated the process of self-archeology. The dining room of the Miller family literally had to be dug from the sand that had hidden it for many years. The uncovering of the table triggered the memory of the Fourth of July meal that was so significant in the lives of these characters and a defining scene in the play. Books that had been cherished by the youthful Richard Miller (played by George MacKay) were excavated like the bones of an extinct species.As most O'Neillians know, the plot of Ah, Wilderness! is only indirectly autobiographical, for it dramatizes a fantasized family, with drug and alcohol abuse in little evidence. The mother, father, and older brother (Janie Dee, Martin Marquez, and Ashley Zhangazha) create the impression of an average, yet blissful, home. Richard, the character who most resembles the youthful O'Neill, despite his precocious knowledge of books still has some growing up to do. At one point, the young, angst-ridden Richard emerges with a hangover from hell in dark sunglasses and black jeans and t-shirt. As the play progresses, the ghost of O'Neill continues to invade the Miller home, casting doubt on the play's portrayal of youth as a paradise. Richard and the other young boys of the town might perceive it that way, but the haunting presence of O'Neill suggests otherwise.George MacKay's performance as the young, defiant, and literary Richard Miller was delightful. He was able to inhabit the youthful spirit of rebellion required of the character, while also finding the vulnerability that lives within this young man, as we see when he is left heartbroken by Muriel (Georgia Bourke), when he tastes alcohol for the first time, or has a conversation with his first prostitute, Belle (Yasmin Page). The rest of the cast superbly portrayed the other members of the Miller family. Dominic Rowan's drunken, disorderly Uncle Sid was well crafted and the comedic highlight of the show. Yet his humorous moments were often turned on their head, as, for example, when Sid attempts to reconcile with Lily, portrayed by Susannah Wise, and fails; in this moment he broke our hearts along with hers.I enjoyed this night at the Young Vic. However, in some respects Abrahami's production was guided by O'Neill's ghost, which at times took me on conceptual detours rather than deepening my investigation of Richard's journey. This left me to wonder whose story we were watching: that of the young Richard or the ghosted playwright, Eugene O'Neill?