In the late 1930s and early 1940s Eugene O’Neill was toiling over several of his latest and, by current critical analyses, best plays—The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Hughie, and Moon for the Misbegotten, which is the last play he completed. Startling accomplishments, and perhaps confirmation that of all the outstanding American playwrights of the 20th century, he was at the pinnacle.
Along with this heavy-duty job of work, he was devoting much time to a play cycle. Sometimes it was to be nine plays. Eventually 11 plays were contemplated under, first, the umbrella title More Stately Mansions and then A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed. His intention, he said, was to follow over 150 years “the spiritual and psychological history of the American family.”
Other than preparing outlines, he only completed one of the planned dramas, A Touch of the Poet. (He’d sketched in the subsequent play in the cycle, More Stately Mansions.) Although his intention was to look closely at a family he called Harford, he decided he’d set forth a gaze at how Simon Harford, an important figure in the cycle intentions, came to fall in love with Sara Melody (accent on the middle syllable) and ask for her hand in marriage.
The cycle had to wait. A Touch of the Poet wasn’t produced until 1958, five years after O’Neill’s 1953 death. In the four-act drama the protagonist is Irish immigrant Cornelius “Con” Melody, the proprietor of a pub, or shebeen. His claim to fame, as he clings to it, is having fought so splendidly at Spain’s Battle of Talavera on July 27, 1809 that he was praised by Sir Arthur Wellesley, who not that much later became Duke of Wellington.
Now, the Irish Repertory Theatre is streaming the production of A Touch of the Poet that was scheduled to open just before the pandemic shut down live theater presentations here, there and everywhere. The cast, headed by Robert Cuccioli—and spectacularly—may have dispersed to who knows where on the map. Nevertheless, they’ve been rounded up wherever they are to be superimposed on Charlie Corcoran’s set, a dining room in the Melody home, behind which is the barroom. (This is a follow-up approach to the IRT’s streaming of Conor McPherson’s The Weir a few months back.)
Con Melody, a tyrant to his fawning wife Nora (Kate Forbes) and give-as-good-as-she-gets daughter Sara (Belle Ackroyd), maintains, as forcibly as he can, his dignity as an Irishmen living just outside Boston and in a country where the Irish are considered less than the predominating Yankees. He feels especially full of himself on July 27, 1828, which he celebrates as the anniversary of his great day as a Talavera major. He spends the great day strutting around in his immaculate uniform, talking gloriously about the mare he owns that, he believes, gives him upper crust airs.
He sees to it that his cronies and drinking buddies—his former corporal Jamie Cregan (Andy Murray), chief among them—properly look up to him. That’s not the attitude Sara takes on. She’s far more interested in injured Simon Harford whom she’s nursing upstairs (and never seen) and with whom she’s fallen in love. He ardently reciprocates the feeling.
Complications arise when Simon’s mother, the refined, reticent Deborah (Mary McCann), arrives, is repulsed by the drunken Con and is then superseded by Harford family lawyer Nicholas Gadsby (John C. Vennema), who arrives with a $3,000 offer to the Melodys if all contact between Sara and Simon desists; and if, on top of that, the bought-off family leaves the region.
Such effrontery encourages Con and Cregan to plot some trouble-making at the Harford estate. It’s a foray that backfires, causing the self-defeating barkeep to take a more, as he sees it, realistic view of himself. The change means reverting to the brogue he’s cast aside for self-aggrandizement. Moreover, he makes a symbolic gesture (which won’t be detailed here) in recognition of his delusion shattering.
Throughout A Touch of the Poet, O’Neill advocates will spot the playwright’s abiding themes and crochets as evidenced in the other plays he was involved with at the time. Possibly, the most pressing is O’Neill’s belief—The Iceman Cometh, the most obvious example—that illusions must be faced and dashed, although here, as in The Iceman Cometh, life without illusions doesn’t hold out rosy promises.
O’Neill’s penchant for autobiographical references is also palpable. Con Melody is reminiscent of James Tyrone of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and both are reminiscent of O’Neill’s acting-troupe father. Nora, though not drug-addicted as is Mary Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, is reminiscent of his mother. The Touch of the Poet mood patterns and labile emotions—sometime heated anger and abject apology occur in a single sentence—have the same effect present in many O’Neill works. “It was the drink talking” is frequently uttered.
Whether A Touch of the Poet is top-drawer O’Neill may remain to be decided, but, under Ciarán O’Reilly’s astute and meticulous direction, it is impressively acted by all concerned. (That includes Ciarán Byrne, David O’Hara, Tim Ruddy, and David Sitler.) And keep in mind, their acting chops had to be strained. After all, were they on stage with each other, they could react to each other as performers do. Here, superimposed from separate locales—in vacuums, it could be said—they constantly had to acquit themselves as screen actors often do. Their accomplishments, even though this form of streamed entertainment is still somewhat crude—are note-worthy. They’re much helped by Alejo Vietti’s costumes, Michael Gottlieb’s lighting, M. Florian Staab’s sound, and Sarah Nichols’ video editing.
More than anything in this tone-y revival, Ackroyd’s Sara and Forbes’ Nora are deeply thought out and achieved, considering the obstacle or even not considering the obstacles. As Con, Cuccioli consistently displays the distressed man’s complexities. His final scenes as the battered and painfully woke Irishmen in an unwelcoming land may be the finest he’s ever delivered. A well-deserved bravo.
