Hartford Stage’s fresh take on ‘Ah, Wilderness’ adds music, multicultural update to Eugene O’Neill’s Connecticut comedy

Hartford Stage Artistic Director Melia Bensussen has waited two years to stage Eugene O’Neill’s comedy “Ah, Wilderness!”, set in the Connecticut native’s hometown of New London. Bensussen picked the play as the first she would direct at Hartford Stage, and after COVID halted theater, she’s chosen it to “welcome people back to live theater” Oct. 14 to Nov. 7.

O’Neill was the most acclaimed playwright of the 20th century. He won four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and wowed New York audiences from 1920 (with his first hit, “Beyond the Horizon”) until years after his death, with the posthumous premiere of “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” still considered one of top plays in the history of American theater.

O’Neill is also still a huge deal in Connecticut, where he spent years as a child in New London. Monte Cristo Cottage, the closest thing to a childhood home O’Neill had, is a historic landmark.

Bensussen feels that O’Neill’s only full-length comedy, “Ah, WIlderness!” is, like its playwright, both an American classic and still vital and relevant in modern times.

The play — a coming-of-age story of an idealistic young man who argues politics with his parents and befriends prostitutes among other eye-opening youthful adventures — is powerful enough to change with the times. “We forget with classics, that they were once new plays,” Bensussen said.

“Ah, Wilderness!” is the sort of play people respect, talk about and also talk back to, she said — not a museum piece. O’Neill remains part of the Connecticut community, and Hartford Stage is dedicated to an active dialogue with that community, stretching back generations as well as into the future.

“I want people to feel it’s their playwright, their theater,” Bensussen says. “This is not a far-away great play. We’re not assuming anything. We’re examining everything. Each play has to be in its moment.”

Originally scheduled to end the 2020-21 season, “Ah, Wilderness!” will now opens the 2021-22 one.

“It’s better suited for this slot,” Bensussen says. “This play reopens our theater with that sense of optimism, that awakening.”

“Ah, Wilderness!” is by far O’Neill most optimistic play. His others tend to be about alienation, anxiety, disease, demoralization and death. But he had a fondness for the Connecticut he grew up in, and “Ah, Wilderness!,” set well before the war, in 1906, is imbued with a spirit of hopefulness, happiness and family.

Bensussen joined the Courant on a walk around downtown New London, O’Neill’s childhood stomping grounds, to discuss the roots of this nostalgic coming-of-age comedy and its relevance to the present day.

From an idealized to modernized family

We start the walk at the small statue of a young O’Neill reading a book. Based on a photo from 1859, it was sculpted by Norman Legassie and has graced a small flower garden area on the harbor since 1988. Today, someone has taken a few flowers from the garden and placed them artfully in the statue’s lap.

Bensussen sits near the statue and muses on the playwright’s upbringing. O’Neill was born in New York City, as Bensussen says, ”grew up in hotel rooms and went to boarding school. But we think of New London as his hometown. This was the only place he could call home. ‘Ah, Wilderness!’ is, in essence, about family. It’s an idealized family. It wasn’t his family. This is his ‘wishing out loud’ play.”

The realization that the Miller family in the play isn’t how the O’Neill family actually was gave Bensussen license to go beyond the playwright’s descriptions of the characters and create a recognizable modern American family.

The Hartford Stage production has an ethnically diverse cast, with Black and Latinx performers playing the Miller family, traditionally portrayed as Irish-American or as avatars of O’Neill’s own family members. The young hero of the play, Richard Miller, is played by Jaevon Williams. His father Nat is played by Michael Boatman of TV’s “Spin City,” “Anger Management” and “The Good Fight.” His mother Essie is played by Antoinette LaVecchia, his brother Arthur by Antonio Jose Jeffries, his sister Mildred by Katerina McCrimmon and his aunt Lily by Natascia Diaz.

This is not “color-blind” casting such as Hartford Stage has practiced in its production of “A Christmas Christmas,” but, as Bensussen puts it, “now about a young Black man and his father. This family makes sense as a family. We thought, what would it be like if we took a contemporary family and put them in that moment?” The family has servants, and those relationships are rethought as well. Some lines, including fat-shaming jokes made at the expense of Essie, have been cut.

“The challenge is to honor the essence of the play and lift it into the moment,” Bensussen says. “If it’s a great play, it holds up. To say that it can only be done with Irish-American actors is limiting. We don’t do that with Shakespeare.”

“It’s not about being Irish-American. It’s about being an idealist. It’s about our children testing our limits.”

‘A large small-town in Connecticut’

We walk past the New London Building & Loan building, the old Hotel Royal and other edifices on Bank Street that O’Neill might have recognized. He didn’t return to New London in his adult life, but had strong memories of his youth there. He lived and worked in a bustling community, one that’s still visible in New London today.

The Dutch Tavern on Green Street has just opened for the day. The watering hole was been in existence since the early 1922. O’Neill would have known it by its pre-Prohibition name, The Oak. Since the late 1990s, The Dutch has been run by Peter Detmold (of legendary New London pop punk band The Reducers) and Martha Conn.

Conn says O’Neill fans and scholars visit the Dutch Tavern often, sharing their love of the playwright and wanting to see a place where he hung out and relaxed. “Yeah, people from Denmark, teachers bringing their students...” And while there’s no firsthand documentation of O’Neill drinking there, Conn says “one of the editors of the [local daily paper] The Day, his father said O’Neill would come here.” In the summer of 1912’Neill worked as a reporter for the now-defunct New London Telegraph, which had its office just a block from the Dutch. A photo of O’Neill hangs on the wall, next to photos of longtime Dutch regulars who, in this environment, were just as vital and well known.

O’Neill describes the set for “Ah, Wilderness!” in great detail in the play’s stage directions. It’s closely based on the family’s summer home in New London, Monte Cristo Cottage, which he also used as the setting for his darker autobiographical drama “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” right down to some of the writers he specifies are on its bookshelves.

O’Neill’s father also owned dozens of other properties in the area. Despite the exacting description of the premises, and the precise date on which the play’s action happens (the 4th of July, 1906), O’Neill is vague about it being New London, calling it simply “a large small-town in Connecticut.”

The Hartford Stage rendition is not a stickler for O’Neill’s stage directions. It’s a multi-level wooden structure with stairs, platforms and balcony-like areas and a New London waterfront skyline for a backdrop. It resembles an outdoor waterfront scene as much as a household one.

“The set is non-literal,” Bensussen explains. “It doesn’t look like Monte Cristo, intentionally. This is lifting it up, I hope in a positive way.”

A musical comedy

In terms of style, Bensussen says this “Ah, Wilderness!” is very much a comedy. She’s even lightened the tone by having the cast play live music for the transitions between scenes. “The music is from the period. There’s one scene in the play where two songs are sung. I thought, ‘This is brilliant. Why don’t we do that throughout?’”

She notes a production at the Young Vic in London in 2015 had a stage covered in sand and a cast wearing modern-day street clothes, but that — unlike other nostalgia-laden small-town dramas, most notably “Our Town” — “Ah, Wilderness!” seldom is challenged with heavy reinterpretations.

“As far as I know,” she says, “not as an expert, but as a theater director who loves this play, I’ve never heard of a production with this much music, or a multicultural cast.”

The play is “in its period, loosely,” Bensussen says. “There’s a little sleight of hand at the top. You are watching a play — watching a play set in 1906, but still watching a play. It’s 1906 in a theater on a stage on a wharf. It’s my read of the play, as a family fantasia, a romance. We need optimism right now.”

Hartford Stage isn’t dumbing down O’Neill’s play, just heightening its brightness. Bensussen, an ace dramaturg as well as director, pored through numerous versions of the play. “We kept the books. We kept the politics. It’s a celebration of tolerance. They talk about freedom of speech. It feels, to me, relevant. It feels like Black Lives Matter now.

Walking down the New London street that was once known as Main Street and was renamed decades ago in O’Neill’s honor, Bensussen reflects on how the spirit of youth and the pull of nostalgia are not old, dead, distant yearnings but catalysts for change, growth and communication.

“Ah, Wilderness!” is not sentimental. Nostalgia is not sentimentality. This is too active, too real.”

“Ah, Wilderness!” runs through Nov. 7. 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.