Ah, Wilderness!

by Eugene O'Neill

seen at the Young Vic on 223 May 2015

O'Neill's only comedy, written in 1933, is directed by Natalie Abrahami and stars George Mackay as Richard Miller, Janie Dee as his mother Essie, Martin Marquez as his father Nat, Susannah Wise as his aunt Lily, Dominic Rowan as Sid Davis and David Annen as an unscripted O'Neill figure presiding over the action who also takes a couple of minor parts. The set design is by Dick Bird.

The costumes forego the ostensible setting of the play in 1906, preferring simpler and indeterminate lines from the mid 20th-century, and the set design ignores the painstaking descriptions provided by O'Neill of various locations in and around the Miller's house. Some of these are read out by David Annen, but often against considerable hubbub from the characters, so that they become a background noise - a neat transference from the visual background a set would normally provide. Instead, there is a raised area at the back with openings onto a sky, and on one side an exit to stairs leading up (presumably to bedrooms and a bathroom); and on the other side stairs leading down (presumably out of the house). The various levels visible to the audience are covered in great drifts of sand, with steps only partially visible. Characters usually negotiate the steps quite successfully, unless in a passion of emotion or a fug of inebriation when they tend to trip or slide in the sand alarmingly. It's a brilliant device for puncturing the histrionics of teenage self-absorption (in Richard's case) or the potentially sorry spectacle of Sid's (and to a lesser extent Nat's) drunkenness in the Fourth of July celebrations.

But there are levels of seriousness beneath the pratfalls, beautifully exposed by Essie's inability to name things that disturb her - whether it be Richard's reading (Wilde, Beaudelaire, the Rubaiyat) or the continuing problem of alcohol amongst the menfolk. And though Richard's outbursts are essentially adolescent tantrums born out of frustrated disgust with social mores and intoxication with racy ideas from literature, there is no escaping the knowledge that these can easily grow into monstrous adult egotism. The ever-present O'Neill figure, often wearily mimicking Richard's nervy and immature gestures and even mouthing his lines, shows us the connection. The 'comedy' lies in the fact that the family is basically harmonious instead of dysfunctional, and the teenager's idealism is looked at fondly rather than cynically.

The cast is excellent. George Mackay brilliantly conveys the restlessness and emotional volatility of a youngster at odds with his world, his great spouts of verbal pyrotechnics matched by physical awkwardness - the twitchings of what now would be classified as ADHD. Janie Dee shows us a mother bemused by this gifted but problematic child, someone with a firm hand and a solid idea of how a household should function (despite a weakness in controlling a wayward Irish maidservant) - the sort of dependable mother figure completely missing from O'Neill's own childhood. Her prudishness is not risible - it is touching. Martin Marquez shows Nat to be a decent man by his own lights, and someone Richard ultimately respects and loves underneath the fireworks; there is a tender rapport between them at the end of the play which is brief but deeply moving. The supporting cast - Richard's siblings, some neighbours and a seedy bartender and callgirl - are well played (the latter pair could so easily have been mere caricatures), while the quiet desperation of the subplot in which Lily Miller consistently refuses to marry Sid Davis provides a poignant counterpoint to the main story.