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Title: Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O'Neill ISBN: 0-573-60514-9 Publisher: Samuel French Inc Plays Pub. Date: 01 June, 1979 Format: Paperback List Price(USD): $6.25

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Average Customer Rating: 5 (3 reviews)

Rating: 5
Summary: Satire
Comment: Excellent satire by O'Neill! According to some, this is the basis of all TV Sitcoms, including both the classics, such as 'The Brady Bunch' and 'Leave it to Beaver' and the rebellions against such 'happy' shows, such as The Simpsons and South Park. We have much to owe O'Neill - even though I interpert this play as a satire of society...

Rating: 5
Summary: Charming comedy shows O'Neill's breadth
Comment: "Ah, Wilderness!" is the only comedy that Eugene O'Neill wrote and as such stands out as quite different from most of his work. It is the story of Richard Miller, a 17 year-old Swinburne- and Wilde-reading intellectual pretty obviously based on O'Neill's memory of himself as an adolescent. Richard is in love with Muriel McComber, a neighbor girl, but Muriel's father objects to the relationship and, after a heated exchange between Mr. McComber and Richard's father Nat, Nat half-heartedly tells Richard to stay away from Muriel, and Richard receives a note from Muriel to the effect that the relationship is over. Despondent, Richard lets his older brother's friend talk him into going to a bar to meet a girl, where Richard gets drunk and engages in some innocent flirtation with her, but does not allow the girl (who unsurprisingly is a prostitute) to take him upstairs. Meanwhile, Richard's parents are worried sick about him and are rather displeased when he comes home drunk, but upon realizing that he's learned his lesson, they let him off fairly easily the next day, and everything, including Richard's relationship with Muriel, works out well in the end.

This play really does have some funny moments (two that jump to mind are the drunken ramblings of Richard's Uncle Sid at the dinner table and the extremely awkward attempt by Nat to have a heart-to-heart talk with his son about sex), and the fact that O'Neill was able to write it reveals that he had a good deal more breadth as a playwright than one might think. It's a very charming portrait of a sort of simple small-town life that was, as O'Neill himself expressed it, how O'Neill would have liked his life to be. Particularly Richard's parents, though they do a couple of silly things for mild comedic effect, are fairly idealized in their treatment of Richard himself--stern when they think his behavior needs correcting but always understanding and supportive--leading one to believe that O'Neill was to an extent trying to paint a picture of how he wishes his parents had treated him (as opposed to how they did treat him, as described a few years later in Long Day's Journey into Night). In any case, O'Neill showed with this play that he was just as adept at depicting life in a happy family as he was at depicting more tragic situations, and in doing so he provided posterity with a very entertaining comedy.

Incidentally, in addition to this version, "Ah, Wilderness!" is available, along with "A Touch of the Poet," "Hughie," and "A Moon for the Misbegotten," in the Modern Library compilation "The Later Plays of Eugene O'Neill" (also sold by Amazon). That compilation is, at this writing, not much more expensive than this single-play volume and it ships sooner, so if you're also interested in one or more of the other plays in the Modern Library edition, it's probably a better buy.

Rating: 5
Summary: Not the usual O'Neil genre, but an excellent read
Comment: Good, quick read by one of my favorite playwrights. Excellent story of a New England town on the Fourth of July in the early 1900's. Spectrum of characters demonstrates O'Neil's ability to approach the coming of age of a young man with lightheartedness not found in any of his other plays. Has very funny moments on paper that I would imagine are even better on the stage. It gives an excellent description of a time when life was simpler and young men and women learned life's hard lessons from first-hand experiences.