Call of the Wilde: Ah, Wilderness! @ ACT
Ah, Wilderness! is the lone comedy in Eugene O'Neill's eye-gougingly tragic catalog. It works as a sort of photo-negative of his later, bleaker masterpiece A Long Day's Journey into Night, with which it shares the setting of a "large small town" in early 20th century New England. Written in the early years of the Great Depression but set in the happier days of 1906, it’s a deliberately idyllic take on the sweet miseries of adolescence — not O’Neill’s own, mind you, which he weathered without the advantages of wealth and familial love conferred upon Richard Miller, his stand-in here. Richard, a Yale-bound high school senior, is a sweet-natured cherub of a boy; utterly inexperienced, and forever reading plays and poems that give his mother fits: George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen, and worst of all, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.
He’s also in love, and therein lies the wafer-thin tale. Richard’s father, Nat, runs the local newspaper. His largest advertiser happens to be the father of Muriel, Richard’s beloved. The plot kicks in when the advertiser accuses Richard of attempting to seduce Muriel by sharing the aforementioned scandalous work of Persian literary genius with her. Nat stands up for his son, but he’s powerless to defend Richard from a blow more lethal than the accusation — a breakup letter from Muriel. Richard, who was kind of an emo kid to begin with, loses it and swears off love. When an upperclassman invites him along to visit what Richard later calls “a secret house of shame,” Richard shuts his ears tight against the wailings of his conscience and goes along.
It’s amusing to watch this 1933 version of 1906 from the vantage point of 2007 mainly because the extra distance compounds the effect O’Neill was going for exponentially: O’Neill intended to portray things as more innocent “back then”; nowadays, it’s difficult to believe that a 17-year-old guy raised by an order of paraplegic nuns in a sensory deprivation chamber could possibly be as clueless about sex as Richard is. (Or indeed, that anyone’s mom would be alarmed to catch her son with a copy of Hedda Gabbler — required reading my sophomore year of high school!)
Pictured: Evan Crump and Kari Ginsburg, the young lovers of Ah, Wilderness!
Fortunately, as Richard, Evan Crump is as lovable a mope as he is a dupe; he’s like a miniaturized Conan O’Brien. And this show puts his abundant charisma to the test — weighing in at 2.5 hours, it has scarcely more plot to drive it along than I’ve recounted in that second paragraph. We don’t even have the young lovers to root for, since we don’t meet Muriel until two hours into the show.
John Collins is the other standout performer in a strong, sprawling cast; as the drunken Uncle Sid, he almost single-handedly rescues Act One from a staginess that afflicts it until the dinner scene wherein the actors finally relax and stop, you know, acting so much. From there on, it’s a sweet ride, if a long one. As Belle, a lady of the evening who tries mightily to impart to Richard some worldliness, Carolyn Myers is a hoot; it’s good to see her in a show worthy of her talents.
Late in the evening, Nat (a rock-solid Kim-Scott Miller), waxing nostalgic, tells Richard that the last time the moon looked so pretty was “when your mother and I were planning on getting married.” Richard’s reply says it all: “You kind of forget the moon looked the same way back then!”
It didn’t, really — not then, not now. But if you want a glimpse of what a suffering nation yearned for it to look like, Ah, Wilderness! just might be your cup of tea. Or your glass of warm milk.
Ah, Wilderness! is at the American Century Theatre through Oct. 6. Tickets are available here.