STAGE WEST
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • David Coddon Fiction
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page

Theater reviews

Stage West

Quiet drama turns loud

1/1/2012

0 Comments

 
​From the moment the bone-tired and recalcitrant Anna Christie plops herself down in Johnny-the-Priest’s saloon, you suspect that she is the proverbial “woman with a past.” By the end of Act 1, you’re damned near sure of it. When your suspicions are confirmed in Act III, you wonder what took Anna’s guilt-ridden old salt of a father and churlishly self-righteous lover so long to figure it out.
            Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, one of the Irish playwright’s most melodramatic (and that’s saying something) works, withholds its emotional explosions. But finally the tale becomes a shouting match between Anna’s Swedish father and Irish lover, with the alternately contrite and resolute girl in the middle, dodging flailing arms and recriminations. In an overcooked production at the Old Globe Theatre, Bill Buell (as Anna’s father, Chris), Austin Durant (as the lover, Mat Burke) and Jessica Love in the title role occupy the Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre like combatants without neutral corners. Lurking in the darkness, invisible, is the “old devil sea” that is the play’s much-repeated metaphor. Love’s too-measured delivery is swamped by the warring Swedish and Irish accents, and O’Neill’s resolution, which smacks of Anna’s submission, doesn’t elicit sympathy for anyone. 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    David L. Coddon is theater critic for San Diego CityBeat

    Archives

    January 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    January 2016
    January 2015
    December 2014
    January 2014
    January 2013
    January 2012
    January 2011

    Categories

    All
    Theatre Review

David Coddon

About 
David Coddon Fiction
Theatre Reviews

Support

Contact
FAQ
Terms of Use
© COPYRIGHT 2017. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
  • Home
  • About David
  • Blog
  • Contact
  • David Coddon Fiction
  • Theatre Reviews
  • New Page