[NEohioPAL] Review of "Anna Christie" at Ensemble Theatre

[Bob Abelman via NEohioPAL]

Ensemble Theatre's 'Anna Christie' is simply superb 

 

Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics 

 

This review will appear in the CJN on 10/3/14

 

Although a relatively early work, "Anna Christie" has all the recognizable elements we've come to expect and admire in a Eugene O'Neill play. 

 

There's the dingy waterfront saloon filled with downtrodden men who talk about their long-suffering women.  There's the effort to escape the past while inevitably destined to repeat it.  And there's the deceptively simple plot that conceals a monumental tale of redemption.  

 

Swedish seaman and lifelong drunkard Chris Christopherson gets word that the young daughter he dispatched for safe keeping to Minnesota relatives 15 years ago - so that she would never know "dat ole devil sea" that he has come to fear and hate - is on her way to visit him.  She is not the angelic farm girl of Chris' windblown imagination and her sequestered existence has turned her into a badly bruised, bitter and forlorn woman of ill repute.

 

To off-set all the melodramatic breast-beating and abundance of metaphors that fill this 1921 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, many modern stagings have accentuated all that is sexy and intense in it.  

 

Ensemble Theatre has gone a different route, choosing instead to go for the heart.  And director Ian Wolfgang Hinz, his cast and crew hit it dead-on.

 

Ensemble's ensemble recognizes and rides the conversational ebb and flow that exists throughout O'Neill's four-act drama.  They use the calm moments of exposition to vividly establish each character's sense of self and all that simmers beneath their back stories, which convinces the audience that these fundamentally good people are capable of overcoming the sum of their bad choices.  As such, the dramatic peaks carry more emotional weight, which hits the audience like a cold, salty tidal wave.  

 

But first we have to get beyond the color-blind casting. 

 

It is highly unlikely that Chris, a native Suede, would be Black and sire such a very blond and very pale Anna.  But the physiological mismatch is easier to overcome than the false plot points and misguided metaphors a Black Chris brings to the surface of an O'Neill play where everything is meaningful.

 

Fortunately, Greg White's singularly stellar performance quickly sets things right.  His salt-of-the-earth Chris is such an affable, likable creation that all one can see is his big heart and all one can do is invest fully in his hopes and dreams for Anna.  

 

The size of his heart comes across most clearly in his tender relationship with Marty (a delightful and authentic Mary Alice Beck), a ridden-hard-and-put-away-wet waterfront regular who appears in the opening scene of the play.  His hopes are given voice in his paternally-driven confrontations with Mat Burke (a wonderful Michael Johnson), a raw-boned Irishman that Chris rescues from the sea and who falls in love with Anna.  Johnson finds the illusive place where his character's crude and brutal side perfectly coexists with his simple sweetness and good intentions.   

 

In the title role, Katie Nabors is superb.  As unlikely as it is that two years on her back in New York would undo Anna's Midwestern accent, earned after 13 years on a farm, Nabors makes it work.  As charismatic as she is confused and as feisty as she is frail, this Anna is a survivor.  It is impossible to take your eyes off of Nabors as she brings this to light.

 

All this takes place on a simple set - a rustic seaport saloon that transforms into Chris' no-frills coal barge.  It is given added dimension and dramatic ambiance with Andrew Eckert's lighting design and a nicely understated rear projection of the sky and surf. 

 

Ensemble Theatre's ability to capture the enduring power of O'Neill's writing was put on display in last year's remarkable production of "The Iceman Cometh."  They have outdone themselves with "Anna Christie."

 

WHAT:            "Anna Christie"

WHERE:        Ensemble Theatre, 2843 Washington Blvd. in Cleveland Hts.

WHEN:           Through October 19

TICKETS:       $12 - $22, call 216-202-0938 or visit tickets at ensemble-theatre.org 
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