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PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: A Touch of the Poet
By Harry Haun
09 Dec 2005
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Gabriel Byrne; Doug Hughes; Byron Jennings; Ciaran O'Reilly; Emily Bergl; Kathryn Meisle; F. Murray Abraham; Jill Clayburgh & Sarah Paulson; Matthew Morrison; Steven Pasquale & Laura Benanti; John Patrick Shanley; Amy Irving.
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| photo by Aubrey Reuben | Given the turbulent dissonance going on in Cornelius Melody's tavern nigh on to three hours in A Touch of the Poet, it is not easy to overlook the author's ironic intent in his choice of surname.
The blare and blather of the customers and the management boiled and bubbled again on Broadway Dec. 8 when Eugene O'Neill's classic play parked itself down
at that recently reclaimed and retheatricalized watering-hole known as Studio 54.
You'd think, with the aptness of the location, that the opening-night party would be held at Tavern on the Green, but no! Roundabout Theatre Company opted for their regular black-box ballroom at the Millennium Broadway Hotel. The gloominess was not entirely inappropriate, come to think of it, but the spirits were flowing and, pretty soon, airborne.
Gabriel Byrne is the calling-card for this new revival, every inch a matinee-idol performance—even to the point of making his entrances in a profile almost classically chiseled. He struts and swaggers through the drama, living the grandest of illusions until his own booze fails to fuel the fantasies he has created for himself in this drab bar outside Boston. His long day's journey into night is quite specific: July 27, 1828. This is Byrne's second time on Broadway, his second time as one of O'Neill's misbegotten and his second time following a Tony-nominated Jason Robards performance.
"I saw a production of it in 1988 with Timothy Dalton and Vanessa
Redgrave, and I read it a few times," he said, but he does really see an easy link between "Con" Melody and the comparably bedeviled James Tyrone Jr., who haunted two of the three plays O'Neill left to be posthumously produced: Long Day's Journey Into Night and A Moon for the Misbegotten. "They're two different tormented men—I guess there are connections between all of O'Neill's characters, for sure—but the themes he's writing about in Poet are the same themes in Misbegotten: the search for love and identity."
A Touch of the Poet didn't really come into its own until the Robards revival of 1978 with Geraldine Fitzgerald and Kathryn Walker. "I first saw this play going to spec out the competition that year," recalled Doug Hughes, who directed this version. [His da, Barnard Hughes, won the Best Actor Tony that year for Da over Robards.] "I don't have vivid, vivid memories of it, but I know that it deeply intrigued me and that I admired it."
It is hard to say why Poet took so long to find its touch. The original 1959 Broadway production was cast creatively—but a little too combustibly for its own good—with Eric Portman, Helen Hayes and Kim Stanley—and their backstage dramas diminished what they did on stage, it has been suggested. Hughes has his own theory about the play's delayed reaction. "First of all, it's a much larger company than Moon for the Misbegotten or Long Day's Journey, the two most-produced ones. We do occasionally get the huge company of Iceman Cometh out there, but I also think it's a hard play to classify. That's one of the things I really love about it. It doesn't fit neatly into a category, and I think the fact that it's such a wild animal. It's filled with low comedy, with great incident, with fantastic plot-reversals. These are things we don't ordinarily associate with O'Neill, and
it's just further proof of the sweep of his genius as an artist."
The play does make certain demands on its audience, but Hughes applauds that fact. "I
want them to kinda rock back and think, 'What the hell just happened?' A play that is
filled up with life this much is an invitation to each member of the audience to project
their own experience on to it. To my mind, the play is such a kitchen of life—how difficult
it is, how seldom we get what we want when we want it, how much time we waste
pretending to be something we're not. All those things create such a phenomenal piece."
Hughes has his next projects lined up like dominos: "I fly out tomorrow to Chicago to
spend some time working in an embryonic stage on a brilliant musical version of that
John Steinbeck novella, The Pearl. Lou Rosen is the composer, and Art Perlman is the
librettist. Then on Monday morning I start rehearsing Eileen Atkins, Ron Eldard and
Jena Malone in Doubt. Adriane Lenox, who plays Mrs. Muller, is sticking around. That
company gives its first performance at the Walter Kerr on the 10th of January, and on the
12th of January I start rehearsing John Patrick Shanley's new play, Defiance."
Dearbhla Molloy, the Welsh actress whose named is spelled phonetically Dervla in her
Playbill bio, plays Byrne's maddeningly optimistic wife, and it's not her first time at putting
up that brave front. "I did this play once in Boston, but I hadn't played the part in the
same way," she said. "It's the only time I did O'Neill." She did a Roundabout Juno and
the Paycock and was one of the Tony-nominated sisters in Dancing at Lughnasa.
Similarly, Emily Bergl had prior training in the role of the defiant daughter. "I dreamed
of playing this role for years," she admitted. "It's an amazing part because it's one of the
few ingenue parts that have all the colors of a leading lady. I played it in community
theatre in Iowa, and I dreamed of playing it ever since, but to do it on Broadway with
Gabriel Byrne and Doug Hughes—I never imagined such things were possible for me. I was working on another show at the Roundabout—Fiction, last summer—and I was
talking with the artistic director and suggested that they do it. I had no idea they were
already planning to do it, so I said, 'Oh, you ought to see me when you start auditioning.'
And I went and auditioned like anyone else, and I got it. There is a god, and she is kind."
The barflies, given to gigs and fits and undulating stances, were believably presented by
all shaky hands, particularly by the creative Byron Jennings, who played Cornelius'
chief crony as if he had rarely ventured beyond the tavern walls. "The character speaks to
me," he said. "I understand. I think he's an Horatio kind of character—plus just the
experiences he has had in his life are fascinating to me. I think he's a unique mixture." Carolyn McCormick, Jennings' wife, looked ravishing in a low-slink of a red gown as
she nodded to compliments for the reviews of her show at the Atlantic, the double bill of Harold Pinter's Celebration and The Room. "I haven't read the reviews, but I hear they're good. The plays are really interesting. The juxtaposition of the two is really good because one is very dark and very serious, and the one I'm in is not."
Kathryn Meisle, a scene-stealer of long standing, is put to the test by her one scene as a
high-brow potential in-law who visits the low-life tavern setting and is abruptly
bussed by Byrne. "Everyone thinks the kiss would be my favorite part, but it's really
not," she admitted. "I think the whole thing is my favorite, just because it's such a
challenge. It's actually harder than a big part. You have to fill it out a lot. You just have
this one shot. It's not, like, 'Oh, don't worry. I'll fix it in Act II.' You don't get an Act II."
As it is, she walked away to applause on opening night—the challenge well met and, reportedly, not an uncommon phenomenon. John Horton also scores in his single scene
as her stuffy solicitor. "You wonder whether to bring on something that will make a huge
impression or to treat it as a part that's going to continue for the rest of the play and
suddenly it's curtailed," he said. "I know one is supposed to say it, but this is really a gem
of a company, and Doug Hughes is the best possible director, and Gabriel is the best
possible leading man to work with. It comes from the top, from Doug and from Gabriel."
Karen Ziemba caught the play but skipped the party, being a working girl these days. On Dec. 12, at the Shubert, she will emcee A Wonderful Life (as in the 59-year-old Yuletide staple). "Actually, we made up a name today—Olive Sandborn. Sheldon Harnick said that was all right," she beamed. The musical that lyricist Harnick and the late Joe Raposo wrote for Broadway is finally getting there—miracle on 44th street!—albeit, for a one-night-only benefit for The Actors' Fund of America. Naturally, it's dream-cast, with Brian Stokes Mitchell doing Jimmy Stewart (George Bailey), Judy
Kuhn doing Donna Reed (her first perfect-wife role, Mary Bailey); David Hyde Pierce doing his wingless guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), and—my favorite—The Sopranos' Dominic Chianese doing Old Man Potter (Lionel Barrymore at his crankiest).
Other actors' fun: Ronn Carroll and Phylicia Rashad as George's parents, Michael Berresse as his brother, Chuck Cooper as their absent-minded Uncle Billy, Marian Seldes as Mary's mom, Philip Bosco as the boss angel, and Bedford Falls denizens like
Marc Kudisch, Nancy Anderson as the town slut (Gloria Grahame, of course), George S. Irving and Well's wonderful Jayne Houdyshell. Continued...
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