A Touch of the Poet

 

     The Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of A Touch of the Poet is well done, as I expected it would be, but I sat there wondering why that play was chosen for revival, especially during a pandemic.  Life was bleak enough without adding a long — two hours and 45 minutes — talky play filled with anger, drunkenness, disillusion and cruelty.  Include now the terror of war, which couldn’t have been predicted when the show was planned, and it all added up for me to a depressing afternoon and darkness I’m having trouble shaking.

     I hadn’t seen or read Eugene O’Neill’s 1942 play in maybe two decades so I booked it to see if my perspective on it had changed.    It hasn’t.  I still dislike the main character, Cornelius “Con” Melody, a former soldier in Ireland turned barkeep in a village outside of Boston in 1828.  Robert Cuccioli summons all his alcoholic rage and delusions of grandeur.  His long-suffering wife, Nora, (Kate Forbes) tries to keep him happy while their sharp-tongued daughter, Sara, (Belle Aykroyd, in photo) spars with him every chance she gets.  

     “God help you, it must be a wonderful thing to live in a fairy tale where only dreams are real to you,” Sara tells her father in one of her tirades against him.

     Not exactly the family with which one wants to pass an afternoon.   

     Con spends his days drinking and spinning tales of a grand childhood in Ireland and reliving his great battle of Talavera as Major Melody, wearing his red-jacketed uniform each year on the anniversary.  Alejo Vietti and Gail Baldoni did a fabulous job with the uniform and all of the costumes.

     Sara predicts her father’s downfall, telling him if he can ever face the truth “you’ll hate and despise yourself.”  It takes a long time to get to that conclusion. 

     The performances, under the direction of Ciaran O’Reilly, are good and Charlie Corcoran’s set is a wonderfully believable recreation of the dining room in an early 19th century tavern.  So many good elements in a play I wish I hadn’t revisited.