Classic American comedy ‘Ah, Wilderness!’ touches hearts at Hartford Stage

“Ah, Wilderness!” welcomes audiences back into Hartford Stage with a charming old-school comedy that, as this thoughtful production proves, deserves to be done in the modern world much more often.

This portrait of a loving, trusting family helping guide an outspoken teen through some thorny coming-of-age adventures isn’t some escapist fantasy that takes us away from life during COVID, and it isn’t a timely provocation based on current events. “Ah, Wilderness!” is just a good old play worth seeing.

Set in 1906 Connecticut (and full of hilarious jabs at Yale), this is a comedy about growing up. Not growing up fast, or growing up amid hardships and obstacles. The young hero Richard Miller, played by Jaevon Williams, is starting to find his own way, developing his own ideas and beginning a serious relationship.

“Ah, Wilderness!” is profoundly nostalgic. It’s about not wanting to cross your parents, about planning to marry your first real girlfriend. It’s deliberately old-fashioned, deliberately straightforward and uncomplicated. In the hands of director Melia Bensussen (with the first show she has directed at Hartford Stage since becoming its artistic director in 2019), it’s also not judgmental, or about traditional family values.

Bensussen has enlisted an ethnically diverse cast to portray what most other productions in the play’s long history have seen as white and Irish. Richard, his father Nat and his brothers are all played here by Black actors, while his mother and aunt are Latina.

There are always those who will carp, for example, that African Americans would not have access to the opportunities granted these characters in 1906. (Nat Miller is the editor of a mainstream daily newspaper, has one son at Yale and another about to go there.) But in present-day theater, that’s beside the point. This is a play, and acts like a play, and in the regional theater these days it would be odd to see a play without a diverse cast. You fall into this “Ah, Wilderness!” much more smoothly because it resembles the world as we know it.

Besides, there’s a sheer joy is seeing skilled actors take charge of roles they haven’t had a shot at before. Michael Boatman, who’s had several busy seasons as the put-upon Republican judge Julius Cain in TV’s “The Good Fight,” is a jovial, even-tempered yet emotional Nat Miller, a wise father figure who is always calibrating the best way to talk to his children.

The effortlessly amiable Boatman is well matched by Antoinette LaVecchia, who plays Nat’s wife Essie with a power and compassion equal to her husband’s. Her strong will is partly due to some judicious cuts to the script — here, Essie is not mocked or undermined openly with jokes about her weight, and she’s not a nervous wreck who’s constantly fanning herself.

That’s the real value of this “Ah, Wilderness!”: not relying on stereotypes for the laughs. Essie’s brother (and Nat’s close friend) Sid, played by McCaleb Burnett, is branded as an alcoholic early in the play, and has some scenes where he has drunk too much and misbehaves, but it’s a realistic, sympathetic portrayal, not a dumb drunk act. Richard’s siblings Arthur (Antonio Jose Jeffries), Mildred (Katerina McCrimmon) and young Tommy (Myles Low) are energetic and obnoxious the ways brothers and sisters can be. They make the stage seem noisy and crowded when it needs to be.

Tanner Jones makes the most of his few minutes onstage as the weaselly Wint Selby, who casually corrupts Richards with a night on the town at a hotel of ill repute, introducing him to Belle, a type of person once dubbed “floozie,” as well as a helpful bartender (Stuart Rider).

Even with grand scene-stealing characters like Wint or Belle, the humor is natural, not arch. Bensussen and the cast play it straight, not as a brash sitcom with a pushover dad, an overbearing mom, uniformly bratty children and contrived overplayed confrontations. O’Neill’s dialogue is strong enough that it doesn’t have to staged with exaggerated gestures. There are several arguments about the types of books Richard is reading, and the dialogue isn’t superficial or symbolic — it’s peppered with worthwhile witty remarks about Shaw, Ibsen, Wilde and “The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.” You don’t want actors shouting or waving their arms in such scenes, and Bensussen doesn’t allow it.

There’s a dinner scene where the talk about soup is funnier than any big soup-spilling sight-gag a lesser director might insist on dropping into it.

This is a believable family doing believable family things, as seen through a rose-colored nostalgic theatrical filter. This production stays buoyant and showy by having the actors sing old parlor songs while they change the furniture between scenes, assisted by a pianist who is onstage for the entire show.

There are also clever uses of dual roles. One reason “Ah, Wilderness!” doesn’t get done as often as it used to is that it has 15 characters, and anyone who’s not part of the Miller family appears only for one scene or a few lines. At Hartford Stage, the actors who are enlisted to cut down the cast size by playing more than one role are subtly working a theme. Joseph Adams portrays two brusque men who get angry at Richard for how he behaves around women: one is the father of his girlfriend Muriel and the other is a salesman who comes between him and the prostitute Belle. Even cooler is having Brittany Anikka Liu play both Muriel and Belle, the two women that Richard romances.

A multi-platformed set, the sort where walls are invisible and windows dangle in the air and stairways frame the back of the stage, lets the play act like a play without being too stagey. With such an open background to play on, as well as Hartford Stage’s iconic thrust stage, actors can face different directions, approach from great distances and take advantage of a bunch of different ways to come and go from the stage.

There are so many comforting, community-uplifting moments in “Ah, Wilderness!” that it’s a great choice for the first live in-person show Hartford Stage has done since being shut down by the pandemic 18 months ago.

This theater does usually not go in for live pre-show announcements, but at Friday’s opening night performance there was managing director Cynthia Rider talking about the tremendous support the theater received that has allowed it to reopen. Board president Jack Sennott saying the opening-night crowd looked “just like the old days,” Diane Cantello from one the theater’s big sponsors, Stanley Black & Decker, being supportive, and Melia Bensussen saying that Eugene O’Neill in 1933, during the Great Depression, “chose to write a comedy” exploring “the best in human nature.” She said he realized optimism was required then, and we need that optimism again now.

She could have added that we need trusting and forgiving families, and openminded multicultural communities, and well-written plays on universal themes now too, but she didn’t need to say that. She shows it.

“Ah, Wilderness!” runs through Nov. 7 at Hartford Stage, 50 Church St., Hartford. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m. $30-$100. Visit hartfordstage.org for information.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.