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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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October 30, 2020 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review a webcast of the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet. Here’s an excerpt.

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How bad can a play be and still be good? Eugene O’Neill tested the limits many times, perhaps most exasperatingly in the long-winded, top-heavy “A Touch of the Poet,” whose first act (there are four) consists almost entirely of clumsy exposition that could and should have been dumped. The results are all but unwatchable in anything short of a first-class production—which is just what the Irish Repertory Theatre has given “A Touch of the Poet” in its latest webcast. Perfectly cast and staged by Ciarán O’Reilly and brilliantly produced by a virtuoso team of designers and editors including by Sarah Nichols, the show’s miracle-working video editor, it is a shining model for any company putting its work online during the COVID pandemic.

A 19th-century costume piece, “A Touch of the Poet” is the story of Con Melody (Robert Cuccioli), a Byron-quoting soldier turned alcoholic innkeeper who has frittered away his life passing himself off as a to-the-manor-born gentleman. This pretense is a continuous slap in the face of Nora (Kate Forbes), his loyal but long-suffering wife, who forced Con, a man of colossal vanity, to marry beneath his imaginary station by getting pregnant and has lived with the consequences ever since….

When done poorly, “A Touch of the Poet” is all but unendurable. When done like this, it’s still too long but powerfully compelling nonetheless, and I’m tempted to say that it it is helped by being watched at home. At no time do any of the nine members of the cast yield to the temptation to overplay their hand: Their performances are in close keeping with the intimacy of this kind of presentation, and Mr. Cuccioli is vastly superior to anyone else I’ve seen take on the role

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Read the whole thing here.

The trailer for A Touch of the Poet:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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