'Anna Christie' bridges troubled waters
n The relationship between a sailor and his daughter is presented by the Avenue Players.
By BARBARA L. FREDRICKSEN
Published March 24, 2006
Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Anna Christie, started out as Chris, the story of a ship's captain and his rough life as a sailor, a subject the playwright knew well from his years at sea and hanging around sleazy waterfronts.
O'Neill rewrote the play several times, shifting the focus each time, until it became Anna Christie, the story of a disillusioned prostitute who reunites with her father, a gruff, hard-drinking coal barge captain, Chris Christopherson, decades after he has deserted her mother for a life at sea and forced his daughter to live with uncaring relatives, including a cousin who had raped her at a young age.
The Avenue Players Theatre troupe will present the play at the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art starting Thursday and continuing through April 9.
Anna Christie was ground breaking for the early 1920s, with its realistic depiction of lower-class people caught up in tormenting relationships. The dialogue is rough; the characters are imperfect, and the end foreshadows still more turmoil.
In it, a shopworn Anna (Kimen Mitchell, Lady Kitty in The Circle) has written to her dad Chris (Mike Jurgensen, Tesman in Hedda Gabler), asking if she can come see him. Chris is elated, toasting the impending reunion with his drinking buddies, Johnny the Priest (George Miller) and Longshoreman Johnson (Walter H. Hoskins and Ira Wolf) and his live-in girlfriend, Marthy (Kathryn Capofari, on television's Guiding Light), at a local bar.Chris goes to go find something to eat, and Anna enters. Old Marthy immediately sees her for what she is, but decides to leave Chris so he and his daughter can reconcile without interference.
Anna and Chris go to his barge, which, like her life, is shrouded in fog. They launch the barge and before long hear cries for help from the water. They rescue four sailors whose ship has sunk, among them the rowdy Irishman Mat Burke (Doug Ronk, Judge Brack in Hedda Gabler).
At first, Mat thinks Anna is Chris' latest live-in girlfriend and makes a brutal pass at her. He soon learns Anna is Chris' daughter, much to his chagrin, and he immediately sees her as a potential wife, never realizing her sordid past.
Chris, who is also oblivious to Anna's past, doesn't want his daughter to marry a sailor; he's convinced that "that old devil sea" is no good for anyone. Anna, though, sees Mat as a savior, someone who can help her forget the hurts that life has dealt her so far.
Eventually, the truth comes out, and both men are stunned by it.
There is resolution, but as the play ends, it's obvious that there are more storms and fog ahead for Anna, Mat and Chris.