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Opined December 28, 2005
A Touch of The Poet by Eugene O’Neill, Directed by Dough Hughes (Doubt, Defiance, Beard of Avon, Last Easter)
With Gabriel Byrne (Cornelius Melody) Dearbhla Molloy (Nora Melody), Emily Bergl (Sara Melody), John Horton (Nicholas Gadsby), Byron Jennings
(Jamie Cregan), Kathryn Meisle (Deborah), Randall Newsome (Paddy O’Dowd), Ciaran O'Reilly (Dan Roche) and Daniel Stewart Sherman (Mickey
Maloy).
Sets and costumes, Santo Loquasto; lighting by Christopher Akerlind (Light in the Piazza, Rabbit Hole)
Presented by the Roundabout Theater Company, Todd Haimes, artistic director; Harold Wolpert, managing director; Julia C. Levy, executive director. At
Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, Manhattan; (212) 719-1300. Through Jan. 29.
Before I tell you how I was mugged in the balcony, let me tell you about the show.
Well, it’s just the silliest thing, and you can’t say that too often about Eugene O’Neill. I don’t mean silly as in funny ha-ha but rather silly in the sense of how it would
be really silly of you to spend an evening watching this play unless you were a volunteer usher who was offering her body in trade for a seat. And even then it isn’t
the brightest idea in town.
Somebody once said that a story told by the Irish will always lean toward using 40 words when 4 would do. This means that this show could have been done in 16
minutes instead of 2 hours and 40 minutes. OK not 16 minutes – maybe 32.
This is the story of an Irish immigrant family outside Boston in the early 1800’s. The Pa thinks he is an aristocrat and sports a gamey English accent while he
ridicules both his wife and his daughter in front of anyone or no one. They own a tavern, which the women run and the Pa mistakes for his private property. He is a
survivor of war and prefers to live that memory as opposed to the present where he is neither gentry nor a hero. Somehow this family has taken in a local well to do
young gentleman who has fallen ill. He is upstairs where the tavern owners’ daughter waits on him hand and body. It is this guest who has a touch of the poet,
which we never see because he never appears. His parents get wind of the romance going on at ye olde taven and register a protest to the proposed union. This
royally pisses off the Irish Pa who goes on a rampage in his dress red uniform and comes back to the tavern having lost his clothes and his mind which we know
because now he now sports an Irish accent. After tossing his daughter around a little he insists that she marry the touch of the poet guy upstairs because she is no
longer a virgin and besides which, Pa confesses, he himself is a nut case. The end.
The acting is about as good as the story. Which is too darn bad.
OK – now to the drama. Roundabout never guarantees seats to ushers. Rather they guarantee a seat on the steps in the balcony, which isn’t that bad, but is a little
rough on my butt. On this night I spotted an empty seat and as the lights went down for the second act I snagged it, climbing over people who muttered “Well, I
NEVER!” “This is out RAGEOUS” and who do you THINK you are? Honestly, I felt just like Cinderella when the Duke comes around with the glass slipper and, in
retrospect I really should have backed awaaaaaaaaaaaaay from the car and right out of that aisle. But I didn’t. I got to the empty seat, moved a pile of coats over one
with the help of a nice guy in back of me and sat down. The woman next to me leaned over and whispered, “That is MY FRIEND’s seat.” “Good thing she’s not in
it,” I said.
Sitting on the other side to Miss Congeniality was a woman in her 70’s or so who started leaning over and whispering at me “She’s sitting on my COAT. Tell her to
get off my COAT!” Well, I wasn’t on her COAT, I was sitting NEXT to it which I told her. The entire balcony shushed her but she continued to mutter on and off
throughout the second act. So there I am with my right eye on this sad, sad production and my left eye on this woman who is obsessed with the proximity of my
butt to her coat.
End of play. Applause. Curtain. Coat Lady reaches over and piches my arm, shouts, “I WANT my caot! GIVE ME MY COAT!” and launches herself across her
friend directly onto me. Do not underestimate old ladies from New Jersey, folks. Down I went, coats sliding onto the floor where they really deserved to be, her
shouting “Give me my COAT!” When I looked up she was standing there with my glasses in her claw hissing, “You give me my coat and you’ll get your glasses.”
Her friend picked me up, grabbed my glasses, and handed them to me and said, “Please go now. You’ve been extremely disruptive.” Enjoy the ride home on your
broom, I thought.
Who is to say? Was the old gal a nut? Was it the play having its gloomy affect on the audience? Or was it that black “Volunteer Usher” sticker on my white blouse
that made these people think I possessed just a little less of the poet than they?