By Kevin Hylton
December 21, 2005
It’s been a few months since I last posted a piece with MoviePooopShoot. I’ve been finishing up my book of interviews and working on my own material for the stage and screen and somehow this column sadly sat on the back burner. A couple of days ago I was invited to the opening of the Roundabout Theatre’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s A TOUCH OF THE POET and I decided it was time to revisit this column. A TOUCH OF THE POET was written by O’Neill in 1942. The current production stars Gabriel Byrne and the show is running at the famed, Studio 54. 54 was a club but now qualifies, based on seating capacity, as a Broadway theater. Doug Hughes directed the production.
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Clearly, Eugene O’Neill’s body of work, Nobel Prize, and many awards leave him in a league of his own. The recent revivals of A LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, and THE ICEMAN COMETH showcase some of the playwright’s finest work and the vitality of the plays to today’s audiences. I am such a huge admirer of these plays that when I sat down and watched, A TOUCH OF THE POET, I have to say I was a bit disappointed. I believe that although the play is clearly better than anything I can come up with, it does not have the same fire that his other “bigger” plays own. There are moments in the script where the playwright’s brilliance is exposed.
Themes that will be fully addressed in A LONG DAY’S JOURNEY and ICEMAN are touched upon briefly in A TOUCH OF THE POET. Parent/child and husband/wife issues lie central at this piece. O’Neill considers themes of regret and the inability to live in the present throughout the play. One of the more interesting aspects of the play is the way it looks at exile as an issue. The protagonist and his family have left their homeland and their experience in the United States as recent immigrants during the nineteenth century is an unusual theme not frequently addressed in modern plays.
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Unfortunately, the play meanders in a variety of different directions and the result is several major themes are not fully explored within the play. Rather, the play reads as if O’Neill was playing connect the dots with a collection of issues. Without a doubt, certain issues are fully developed but the feverish focus present in LONG DAY’S JOURNEY and ICEMAN is not present in THE POET. One could argue that this is the reason to see the play. There is value in seeing what came before a playwright’s best work.
Doug Hughes is, no doubt, a talented director. Recently, Hughes directed some very important playwrights’ works. Hughes recently was awarded for his direction of John Patrick Shanley’s play DOUBT, directed Steve Belber’s MATCH, and a number of other Broadway and Off-Broadway productions. I am not a director and for this reason I think my analysis of this play’s directorial choices and Doug Hughes’ directorial work should therefore be taken with a grain of salt. I will not break down the play’s directorial style or devices used. Recently, while interviewing a playwright I got into a conversation with the author about theater critics. The playwright said something very simple that made a lot of sense. People can tell the good stuff from the crap. I think that overall this is true. Without going into a long drawn out analysis of the director’s ineffective use of space or the fact that the actors barely move during a production you can on a very basic level let people know how if a play works.
A TOUCH OF THE POET is going to appeal to a fan of O’Neill regardless of what I tell you about the direction. The actors are first rate in this production. The sets are stunning. The theater is an odd choice but intimate enough so that a seat upstairs will keep an audience in the action. If you are not a fan, and by this I mean a dire fan of O’Neill, I wouldn’t suggest buying a ticket. The play feels long, it does not move, and the script is more fractioned than many of the other plays O’Neill wrote in his career. Do us all a favor, support John Patrick Shanley and all of the young writers out there. Spend your 100 dollars going to see two new playwright’s works off Broadway. Even though this is the work of a master and the actors are stellar, sadly there is barely a touch of the poet evident in this production.
A TOUCH OF THE POET runs till January 29th at STUDIO 54. Tickets can be obtained through the box office at Phone Tix: (212) 719-1300.
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