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Play Takes Courage

By Flora Johnson

"Ah! Wilderness" is a play
that it requires courage to take
seriously. Written by Eugene
O'Neill, each line is a cliche?,
each scene a parody, the play itself
a set-piece for an era in
which maturity happened when
you ran out of breath.

The hero, played with a number
of endearing flashes of talent
by Richard Tait, is the same emotional
age as his prewar setting.
He rebels; he quotes Shaw.
(Tragically, the audience collaborates
by laughing, dutifully,
that anyone should find such a
thing shocking.)

His father understands—and
spends the rest of the play preparing
to explain sex. Yet C. Linwood
Duncan manages to convey,
somehow, the inimitable attraction
of a man not convinced of his
own intelligence.

Seemingly deserted for his radicalism
by his true love, our young
man finding himself sets off to
encounter finitude in a loose woman
and slow gin fizz.

Yet, nestled in the trust of his
family, he emerges from the
episode unscathed. And older.
That is, his banalities are now
ones of which Father approves.
One wouldn't tell the end, but for
fear of redundancy rather than
giving it away.

"Ah! Wilderness," indeed. It
was apparently written as a comedy
of the heartwarming variety, but
this year's hearts are in a different
place. As for laughs, Paul Kuritz
as Uncle Sid has remarkable comic
skill, yet one clown doesn't make
a comedy.

In the first act, the players
succumb often to the temptation
to try for laughs by capitalizing
on the camp quality of some of the
lines. Their timing was off noticeably
at this point.

Nevertheless, the Players eventually
found their courage. It is
to the credit of the director, Arthur
C. Greene, Jr., that he seems
to have made them more aware
that the essence of comedy is not
the knee-slapping joke. If you
fail to be made happy, they seemed
to say, the fault is with you rather
than with the play.

It is not true that only the
audience's cynicism prevents it
from being amused; much of the
dialogue goes beyond sentiment to
triteness. But as the second and
third acts progress, the pacing
improves and, at once, the actors
deliver their lines conscious that
even the banal is intended to mean
something to the characters they
are portraying.

The effect is peculiar. Words
pile on words, until the final:
"It seems we're surrounded by
love," and "Spring is good, but so
is autumn, and even winter."

The irony is only very faint;
essentially one is left feeling half
amused, half imposed upon. The
play was intended as a parody
of youth. In a different age it
becomes a display, easily a parody,
of innocence.

Commendably, the Players for
the most part avoid that temptation.
Innocence should not be
parodied; yet one is left feeling
that perhaps it should just be
left alone.