A Wicked Opportunity
The Black Hole Theatre Company contributes a comedy to O’NeillFest
Laura Blakley Staff
The show starts off with a bang. It’s the Fourth of July, and that darn Tommy won’t stop setting off fireworks. Welcome to the Black Hole Theatre Company’s presentation of Ah, Wilderness!, Eugene O’Neill’s only comedic play.
We find the tortured soul, lover and poet Richard (as played by Orlando Carreira) caught between a rock and a hard place as the love letters he’s written to his love, Muriel (Alexis Martin) are found and exposed to his family, and his entire world.
Bill Kerr, the director of Ah, Wilderness! and previous director of The Caucasian Chalk Circle for Brechtfest, said that the subtitle of the play best sums up its spirit: “A Nostalgic Comedy of the Ancient Days when Youth was Young, and Right was Right, and Life was a Wicked Opportunity.”
The play is set in the idyllic age of innocence, around 1906, when the United States was far enough from the Civil War to have begun recovering from its hardships, and just before the First World War, when America would lose its innocence again.
“Ah, Wilderness! is a look at O’Neill’s life as it could have been, or possibly as he would have wanted it,” said Kerr. “It’s not too saccharine, it’s not about manners, but it’s about life and gusto.”
With his blossoming love laid before the world and stomped on by his first love’s father, Richard receives a heartbreaking letter from his fiancée, saying that she never wants to see him again, that she doesn’t love him, that everything they had shared up until this moment had been a lie. Richard of course doesn’t know that the letter itself is a lie, and so it puts his entire life into a whole new light. He sees the interactions of his aunt Belle (Christy Boettcher) and the lover she’s rejected her entire life (Tim Bandfield) but still clearly loves, and who loves her. Richard begins to question all of it, and may soon begin his journey on the road to Perdition unless something can reaffirm his belief in love.
The Black Hole Theatre Company’s contribution to O’NeillFest happens to be the only comedy ever written by the playwright, and it made me wonder why the man spent his career writing tragedies when his comedy flows so easily across the stage. The characters are all people we know from somewhere, from the uncle who enjoys rum a little too often for the love of his life’s content, to the brother and sister duo who still bicker continuously, even as they are growing up and becoming adults. Watching these characters onstage is like watching your own family members exploring another aspect of their lives, like love.
Before one goes to see the show, it must be stated that literary buffs will enjoy some of the darker humour (as erroneous comments are made regarding the life and times of the likes of Oscar Wilde), great pieces are recited, such as Red in Jail, and fantastic political ideas are discussed in this play, which starts with a loud explosion, and, as Kerr fittingly put it, “ends with the quiet realization of all those truths that we forget we knew.”
Ah, Wilderness! runs Jan. 19 to 28 and from Jan. 24 to 27 at the Gas Station Theatre, located at 445 River Avenue. Tickets are available at the door, or for reservations call 474-6880. For more information, visit www.manitoba.ca/theatre
