Ah, Wilderness

Leads William Riley and June Schreiner

One of the things about being a writer is that you get to reexamine, re-imagine, revise, and rewrite your own personal story if you choose to do so. Take playwright Eugene O'Neill, whose early life was certainly far from idyllic. Born in a Broadway hotel, he spent most of his formative years on the road and in boarding schools. His father was a self-involved actor who struggled with alcohol. His mother became a morphine addict, never fully recovering from the death of her second son. And his only brother Jamie, whom he revered, lost his own battles with alcohol, despondency, and fast living.

But in 1932, O'Neill wrote Ah, Wilderness!, an idealized look at family life as it could have been, and indeed was for some. The subtitle for the play strongly hints at O'Neill's intention. That subtitle reads: A Nostalgic Comedy of the Ancient Days When Youth Was Young, and Right Was Right, and Life Was a Wicked Opportunity.

Tonight, we got to see a performance of Ah, Wilderness! at the Arena Stage. A strong cast allowed the basic humanity of the play to shine through. Judging from the laughter in the audience, the struggle between the young and their parents is as pertinent today as it was in the 1930s. But, of course, today instead of socialism, spooning and Shaw, we have tattoos, and violent video games, and rap. All shocking in their time, but all part of the growing process..

In a letter to his own son in 1933, O'Neill outlined what he hoped to accomplish with his latest play:

Ah! Wilderness is more the capture of a mood, an evocation (of) the period in which my middle teens were spent - a memory of the time of my youth - not of my youth but of the youth in which my generation spent youth ... It is a comedy ... not satiric ... and not deliberately spoofing at the period ... but laughing at its absurdities while at the same time appreciating and emphasizing its lost spiritual & ethical values.

Well, Mr. O'Neill, for about 2-and-a-half hours tonight a stellar cast let those lost spiritual and ethical values live again, if only for a few brief moments on stage. If you had seen their performance, I think you would have been pleased. I know I was.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
This was the 1st time we viewed a play at the Arena Stage here. But you can bet it won't be the last. Already, we have purchased tickets for another O'Neill drama, his dark masterpiece A Long Day's Journey into Night. And tonight we discovered 4 more plays we want to attend here as part of the company's upcoming 2012-2013 season. Those plays are:

• One Night with Janis Joplin (Sept. 28 to Nov. 4)
• Pullman Porter Blues (Nov. 23 to Jan. 6)
• Metamorphoses (Feb. 8 to March 17)
• The Mountain Top (March 29 to May 12