Idyllic Innocence

ADOLESCENT REBELLION and alcoholism attack family life in the plays of Eugene O'Neill. In his tragedies, they triumph and destroy the family; in Ah, Wilderness, O'Neill's only comedy, love wins out. The family survives all threats in this blissful vision of small-town America. A son goes off for a night of debauchery; the family forgives him. Only fine, three-dimensional acting saves this story of the affectionate Miller family from cloying sweetness.

As the benevolent father of the Miller family, Ted Wiprud sets the tone for all the other actors. Wiprud could easily have lapsed into a fifties sitcom portrayal of a consistently sympathetic and understanding father. More convincing than that, his performance shows real anger and also real forgiveness. Amusing when harassed by his exasperating offspring and touching when anxious for them, Wiprud stays in the background throughout the play. A quiet, unspectacular role, mouthing soothing commonplaces to his children about the necessity of growing up, Wiprud nevertheless makes this father the sort everyone would like to have. As his wife, Shelley Evans does not succeed so well. She is warm and endearing, but unconvincing. Ill at ease with the physical mannerisms of a fifty-year old woman, she moves jerkily and too quickly. Evans conveys maternal anxiety well, but not maternal status.

The father's unmarried sister adores the mother's unmarried brother. That subplot should underline the tightness of this family circle, but in this production, it comes across as merely silly. Sarah Sewall, as the spinster aunt, falls into the obvious danger of mawkishness. She lavishes devotion on her brother's children and her sister-in-law's brother too ostentatiously. And, like Evans, Sewall does not move like a middle-aged woman. Her counterpart is much better. Genuinely funny as the incorrigible uncle, the drunken wastrel, one wishes Jonathan David Lemkin appeared more often.

Only one character outside the family group appears at any length: the temptress in this rural Eden. An outraged father spoils the Miller's teenaged son's romance when he finds the shockingly explicit love poems by Swinburne that young Richard Miller has smuggled to his daughter. Heart-broken, Richard goes out for a night on the town with a friend of a friend whom he discovers to be a common prostitute. Daniel Sherman, the director, miscast Lydia Alix Fillingham as the whore. She perches on Richard's lap when she should sprawl. Her effort at a hard-boiled accent fails utterly. Though drinking steadily, she never allows presumably progressive tipsiness to impede her finicky, wooden speech patterns. Admittedly, the old-fashioned slang hampers Fillingham. "I'll blow you for a drink" gets a raucous laugh O'Neill never intended. Still, Fillingham could have surmounted that difficulty with a knowing smile. Instead, she looks embarassed at having said what she did. This whore sounds like a debutante: she just can't act tough.

Kevin Fitzpatrick, her prey in that scene, also has trouble acting drunk, but otherwise his performance satisfies. A poseur, Richard Miller over-romanticizes himself and his love. Fitzpatrick is properly stagy. His adolescent self-consciousness comes across beautifully: when he quotes Omar Khayyam, we can feel his pride at knowing a poem by heart. Fitzpatrick manages Richard's tricky character development well. He really does change; Richard quotes poetry, by the end of the play, not to impress anyone, but because poetry expresses his thoughts better than anything else.

IT TOOK three hours to get to that change. Ah, Wilderness has a leisurely pace. We don't meet Richard's beloved (Marsha B. McCoy, in a charming cameo) until the final act. But though "Ah, Wilderness" dawdles, it doesn't drag. Skilfully plotted, the events--though tame--transpire quickly, with many rapid scene changes. The constant familial banter speeds up the action; Ah, Wilderness doesn't seem as long as it is. Indeed, Daniel Sherman even gets away with lengthening one scene, in a nice directorial touch. While the family at home worries aobut Richard's absence during his spree, Sherman has the oldest brother sing two turn-of-the-century songs. Drew Murphy sings well, without obtrusive professionalism. The two songs, "Mighty Like a Rose" and "In the Good Old Summertime," drip with old-fashioned innocence. Their insertion reinforces O'Neill's idealization of the American past, as does the pleasant Charles Ives music played during the set changes.

The idyllic world of Ah, Wilderness never existed. No town was ever this innocent, no family this sweet. Yet the actors work well with their sentimental material; they play off one another well. Since Ah, Wilderness rests on family love, the fine ensemble acting--rare in a Harvard production--redeems O'Neill's saccharine morality. We believe this family loves one another, even though we know love doesn't in real life, automatically prevail.