Ah, Wilderness! is a comedy by American playwright Eugene O'Neill

Eugene O'Neill

Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...

 that premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre

August Wilson Theatre

The August Wilson Theatre, located at 245 West 52nd Street in New York City, is a Broadway theatre.Designed by architects C. Howard Crane and Kenneth Franzheim and constructed by the Theatre Guild, it opened as the Guild Theatre in 1925 with a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and...

 on 2 October 1933.

Plot summary

The play takes place on the Fourth of July, 1906, and focuses on the Miller family, presumably of New London, Connecticut

New London, Connecticut

New London is a seaport city and a port of entry on the northeast coast of the United States.It is located at the mouth of the Thames River in New London County, southeastern Connecticut....

. The main plot deals with the middle son, 17-year-old Richard, and his coming of age

Coming of age

Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...

. The title derives from Quatrain XI of Edward Fitzgerald

Edward FitzGerald (poet)

Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The spelling of his name as both FitzGerald and Fitzgerald is seen...

's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his translation of a selection of poems, originally written in Persian and of which there are about a thousand, attributed to Omar Khayyám , a Persian poet, mathematician and astronomer...

, which is one of Richard's favorite poems.

Plot

On the Fourth of July 1906 in a small Connecticut town, the Miller family is finishing breakfast. Nat Miller owns the local newspaper and, with his wife Essie, who have a total of 6 children (yet the oldest 2 are never referred to by name). Eleven-year-old Tommy dashes outside to set off fireworks. Mildred, fifteen, teases her nineteen-year-old brother, Arthur, who plays football at Yale. Sharing the breakfast are Nat's sister Lily and Essie's brother Sid, who have had an on-and-off relationship for years, currently off because of Sid's drinking.

Richard, nearly seventeen, is the one member of the family who has not come in from breakfast. His mother worries about the "subversive" books he is reading by the likes of Swinburne, Shaw, Oscar Wilde and the poet Omar Khayyam. She wonders if he will become an anarchist. Richard is passionately in love with Muriel, the girl next door.

The family gathering is broken up by Muriel's father, McComber, who accuses Richard of corrupting his daughter with love letters featuring quotations from the books. Miller defends his son, even though McComber is one of the paper's biggest advertisers. McComber has punished Muriel, and presents her letter to Richard ending their relationship. Richard is devastated.

Later, Wint Selby, Arthur's classmate at Yale, is looking for someone to go with him on a double date. With Arthur unavailable, Wint hesitantly agrees to take Richard. The "date" turns out to be a rendezvous with prostitutes. While Wint is upstairs Richard sits in the bar, drinking with twenty-year-old Belle, unsure what to do. He starts a fight with a salesman who has insulted Belle.

Richard's parents fret about his late hour and, when he finally arrives, drunk and disheveled, Sid, expert in such matters, puts him to bed while his parents discuss his punishment. The next day, Nat comes home for lunch to punish Richard, who is still asleep. He and Essie disagree about what to do, and Nat goes back to work, secretly happy to postpone the confrontation. When Richard does come downstairs, his mother tells him that he must stay in the house. Almost immediately his sister Mildred arrives with a letter from Muriel promising her love and offering to sneak out that night to meet on the beach.

That evening, the young couple review the events of the holiday, and their future, and they kiss for the first time.

Back home, Nat and Essie discuss possible punishments, and the news that Muriel's father has changed his mind about Richard. Richard arrives looking lovestruck, and Essie leaves him with his father. They talk about the dangers of drinking and loose women, and the play ends happily with Richard gazing at the moon while his parents enjoy a kiss.

Characters

• Nat Miller: The head of the Miller household and the owner of the local newspaper, in his late fifties, a warm, wise, and understanding man.
• Essie: Nat's wife, around fifty years old and the mother of four. She runs a well kept but lived-in house, in a "bustling, mother-of-a-family way."
• Arthur: The 3rd oldest of the Miller children, oldest still living at home, nineteen years old and a football player at Yale University. While home from college he has been dating a girl named Elsie Rand.
• Richard: The 2nd son of Nat and Essie, almost seventeen. He sees himself as a radical and a poet, although most of his words and actions are quite tame. He is in throes of first love, and is sure he loves Muriel McComber with a passion and depth that no one has experienced before.
• Mildred: The only daughter of Nat and Essie, fifteen years old and considered attractive and vivacious. She is noted as having several suitors, so many that her mother "cannot keep up". She is just old enough to be a great tease to her older brothers.
• Tommy: The youngest child in the Miller family, eleven years old and bursting with energy.
• Sid Davis: Essie's forty-five year old brother, a gambler and an alcoholic. He was once engaged to Lily, who broke off the engagement because of his drinking.
• Lily Miller: Nat's forty-two year old sister, a schoolteacher who is unmarried and childless. "She conforms outwardly to the conventional type of old-maid school teacher."
• David McComber: Muriel's father, a local businessman who advertises in Nat's newspaper. At first he disapproves of Richard and Muriel's relationship, but later accepts it. He is a "thin, dried-up little man."
• Muriel McComber: The daughter of David McComber, almost sixteen, a pretty girl who is in love with Richard.
• Wint Selby: A classmate of Arthur's at Yale, nineteen years old and a bit of a "hell-raiser."
• Belle: Twenty years old, Belle is a pretty, peroxide-blonde prostitute.
• Nora: Mrs. Miller's Irish maid
• Bartender
• Salesman

Productions

• The play was first produced on Broadway on October 2, 1933 at the Guild Theatre by The Theatre Guild
  Theatre Guild
  The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players.Its original purpose was to...
  
  , where it ran for 289 performances. It was directed by Philip Moeller
  Philip Moeller
  Philip Moeller was an American stage producer and director, playwright and screenwriter, born in New York where he helped found the short-lived Washington Square Players and then with Lawrence Langner and Helen Westley founded the Theatre Guild.He was educated at New York University and Columbia...
  
   and designed by Robert Edmond Jones
  Robert Edmond Jones
  Robert Edmond Jones was an American scenic, lighting, and costume designer. He is credited with incorporating the new stagecraft into the American drama. His designs sought to integrate the scenic elements into the storytelling instead of having them stand separate and indifferent from the play’s...
  
  . The cast included George M. Cohan
  George M. Cohan
  George Michael Cohan , known professionally as George M. Cohan, was a major American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer, and producer....
  
   (Nat), Adelaide Bean (Mildred Miller), John Butler (Salesman), Ruth Chorpenning (Ruth), Ruth Gilbert
  Ruth Gilbert (actress)
  Ruth Gilbert was an American actress, best known for her role as Alice in the first sound version of Alice in Wonderland in 1931, and as Max in The Milton Berle Show.-Career:...
  
   (Muriel), Eda Heinemann (Lily), Ruth Holden (Belle), Donald McClelland (Bartender), William Post, Jr. (Arthur), Richard Sterling (David), Walter Vonnegut, Jr. (Tommy), John Wynne (Wint), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Richard), Marjorie Marquis (Essie), and Eugene Lockhart (Sid).
• 1933 San Francisco, Curran Theatre
  Curran Theatre
  The Curran Theatre is located in San Francisco and was named by its first owner, Homer Curran. The theatre is currently owned by Carole Shorenstein Hays and is operated by SHN - Overview :...
  
  , starring Will Rogers
  Will Rogers
  William "Will" Penn Adair Rogers was an American cowboy, comedian, humorist, social commentator, vaudeville performer, film actor, and one of the world's best-known celebrities in the 1920s and 1930s....
  
  .
• 1936 London West End debut at the Westminster Theatre
  Westminster Theatre
  The Westminster Theatre was a London theatre, on Palace Street in Westminster. It was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, which was altered and given a new frontage for use as a cinema from 1924 onwards. It finally became a theatre in 1931 after radical alterations...
  
  .

Ah, Wilderness! was revived four times in on Broadway 1941, 1975, in 1988 with Jason Robards

Jason Robards

Jason Nelson Robards, Jr. was an American actor on stage, and in film and television, and a winner of the Tony Award , two Academy Awards and the Emmy Award...

 and Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Dewhurst

Colleen Rose Dewhurst was a Canadian-American actress known for a while as "the Queen of Off-Broadway." In her autobiography, Dewhurst wrote: "I had moved so quickly from one Off-Broadway production to the next that I was known, at one point, as the 'Queen of Off-Broadway'...

, and again in 1991.

Adaptations

The story was also made into the 1959 Broadway musical Take Me Along

Take Me Along

Take Me Along is a musical based on the Eugene O'Neill play Ah, Wilderness, with music and lyrics by Bob Merrill and book by Joseph Stein and Robert Russell.-Background:...

starring Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason

Jackie Gleason was an American comedian, actor and musician. He was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy style, especially by his character Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, a situation-comedy television series. His most noted film roles were as Minnesota Fats in the drama film The...

 as the drunken Uncle Sid (Beery's role in the film), Walter Pidgeon

Walter Pidgeon

Walter Davis Pidgeon was a Canadian actor, who starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs...

 as Nat and Robert Morse

Robert Morse

Robert Morse is an American actor and singer. Morse is best known for his appearances in musicals and plays on Broadway. He has also acted in movies and television shows. His best known role is that of J. Pierrepont Finch in the 1961 Broadway musical, and 1967 film How to Succeed in Business...

 as Richard. The production ran for 448 performances. Gleason won the 1960 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

The play was made into a 1935 film of the same title

Ah, Wilderness! (film)

Ah, Wilderness! is a 1935 screen adaptation of the Eugene O'Neill play of the same name starring Wallace Beery. The movie was filmed in Grafton, Massachusetts and directed by Clarence Brown. Beery plays the drunken uncle later portrayed on Broadway by Jackie Gleason, and the film features Lionel...

 and again in 1948 as the musical Summer Holiday

Summer Holiday (1948 film)

Summer Holiday is a 1948 American musical film, starring Mickey Rooney and Gloria DeHaven. It is based on the play Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill, which had been filmed as Ah, Wilderness! by MGM in 1935.-Cast:...

. Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney

Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...

 starred as Tommy in the former and Richard in the latter.

The play was also adapted for the radio on the Campbell Playhouse and Ford Theatre

Ford Theatre

Ford Theatre was a radio and television anthology series broadcast in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. At various times the television series appeared on all three major television networks, while the radio version was broadcast on two separate networks and on two separate coasts...

.

External links

• Ah, Wilderness! production archive at eONeill.com
• Photos of a production of Ah, Wilderness!