By Michele Markarian
‘Anna Christie’ – Written by Eugene O’Neill. Adapted and directed by Scott Edmiston. Presented by Lyric Stage Company of Boston, 140 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA, through May 6.
Eugene O’Neill won his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1922 for Anna Christie. Originally a four-act play with far more actors than Edmiston’s stripped down five, it must have been shocking and sordid in its day. Anna Christie is a story of a prostitute believing herself to be too far gone for redemption reuniting with her father, a frightened former boson convinced that the lure and lull of the sea is a curse for him and his family. “This is a very weird play,” I said to my husband as we left, but somehow, this excellent cast makes it all seem hazily credible. Weirder still – and I assure you this never happens – I dreamed I was conversing with some of the play’s characters the night I saw it. If that’s not a sign that a play hasn’t gotten under your skin, I don’t know what is. Scott Edmiston has an eye for mise en scene, which helps.
The play opens in a dockyard bar with Chris Christopherson (Johnny Lee Davenport) knocking back a few drinks, waiting for the arrival of his daughter Anna (Lindsey McWhorter). Chris hasn’t seen Anna since she was five. After the death of her mother, Chris allowed Anna to live on her aunt’s farm, far away from the sea that Chris fears will stir her soul, and not in a good way. His lady friend, Marthy (Nancy E. Carroll), spies Anna first, as Chris is attempting to sober up in the café’s kitchen. “I got your number the minute you walked in the door,” says Marthy to Anna, a cool, guarded young woman who’s capable of knocking back a few drinks herself. It turns out Anna’s life on the farm was not the wholesome idyll Chris imagined it to be – she was abused by her relatives and raped by one of the sons. After a few years as a kind of governess, she turned to prostitution. But she doesn’t tell her father this. Chris too, had made his life out to be grand, telling his daughter in a letter he worked as a janitor for a building. Anna is disappointed that he actually oversees and lives on a coal barge, and although she resists fiercely at first, she soon grows to love life on the sea and the enveloping fog, which makes her feel “clean”.
The cast is terrific. Davenport is wonderful as the alternately fearful and cheerful aging man, regretful of his choices but incapable of imagining things any other way. McWhorter gives a subtle and layered performance as Anna, withholding and vulnerable at the same time. Whelton is convincing as Mat, the passionate stoker, and the Carroll as the laconic Nancy is so good I wanted her to come back in Act II. James R. Milord as Larry, the barkeep, has a natural, easy presence.
Janie E. Howland’s versatile wooden set design and Karen Perlow’s moody lighting create a tense and starkly beautiful atmosphere. Friends of mine spoke warmly of the show’s “happy” ending, but this reviewer thinks these characters are headed for trouble. You’ll jave to see for yourself. For tickets and info, go to: https://www.lyricstage.com/
