Eugene O’Neill’s drama of love and suffering, “Anna Christie,” received a skillful and intense presentation by an experienced cast of actors in this most moving revival at the Metropolitan Playhouse. Director Robert Kalfin wisely stayed close to O’Neill’s text since this naturalistic drama seems to propel itself with its own elemental emotions. The result was a searing performance by actors who grasped that the roles they played were forged in deep suffering and grief.

Central to the success of the production was the strong performance of Jenne Vath as Anna Christie. In the beginning of the play Ms. Vath showed all the characteristics of an abused and wronged woman, hostile, hard, and driven to drink. As the plot enfolds, and she warms to the love-smitten Mat Burke, played by Roger Clark, Ms. Vath softens her demeanor, although she feels she cannot marry Mat because she is a fallen woman having worked, in desperation, as a prostitute. Naturally, each problem Anna encounters in the play, such as the opposition of her father Chris Christopherson, played by Sam Tsooutsouvas, to any marriage by Anna to a sailor, ignites a dramatic explosion in the plot. Ms. Vath rose to all these challenges showing Anna’s strength and integrity in her fiery lines. In O’Neill’s dramatic world, life is a fierce Darwinian struggle.

Thanks to very competent casting, the performances of the other actors in the play were equally creative and authentic as that of Ms. Vath. Mr.Tsoutsouvas was outstanding as Anna’s father, playing a flawed character who suffered much from life and “that ole davil,” sea, O’Neill’s symbol of fate in the play. The long acting experience of Mr. Tsoutsouvas showed readily in his performance. Christopherson is a character whose life is permeated by death and hardship. He lumbers across the stage with a world-weary gait, and speaks his lines with soul-weary resolution, his thick Swedish accent sounding entirely authentic. He has the painful memory of the death of his young wife, and the death of his father, his two brothers, and his two sons, all at sea. No wonder that he vigorously opposes the marriage of Anna to a sailor. Mr. Tsoutsouvas also understood the growth in his character by showing Christopherson forgetting his opposition to the marriage of Anna and Mat when he realizes that it would be the better choice for Anna. In short, Mr.Tsoutsouvas’s dramatic skills created a real living character.

Mr. Clark’s interpretation of the redoubtable Mat Burke was another stage triumph. His huge stature, booming voice, overwhelming confidence, his thick Irish brogue, and his acting skills made an unforgettable portrayal of this Paul Bunyan of the sea. Burke’s overwhelming love at first sight pursuit of Anna quickly overcame her alienation and defenses. His proposal to her is typical of his temper: “We’ll be marrying soon and I don’t

care who knows it.” When Christopherson attempts to chase Burke away by force, Mr. Clark’s abundant strength and determination easily quell him. Moreover, Clark’s howling rage when he learns of Anna’s unfortunate past and his vivid account of his two-day binge in low whiskey-soaked dives were extraordinary experiences for the audience, charting new levels of despair for the role.

All of the supporting actors played their roles well in this production. Ms. Karen Christie-Ward was especially memorable for her interesting portrayal of Marthy Owen, her father’s live-in girlfriend on the barge. She gave an interesting performance as the first person in the bar to meet Anna and to ingratiate herself to her.

Director Kalfin is to be commended for putting together a tightly knit production that moved along quickly and coherently with good ensemble acting. Set Designer Michael Anamia set up a simplistic set since the theatre’s small stage allows little else: however, the simple bar with two beer spigots on stage right rear, and the two small tables with chairs were quite adequate to suggest a waterfront hang-out for sailors. Several fishing nets hanging from the ceiling gave the right atmosphere for the stage. Special mention should be made of the scenic painting of Mr. Tony Andrea. The seascape mural on the entire wall of the rear of the stage was most scenic and suggestive. It was a large mostly skyblue background dotted with occasional white puffy clouds, and showing a narrow strip of shoreline along the bottom edge. An occasional sound of a sad foghorn made the stage illusion complete. Costume design by Rebecca J. Bernstein was most adequate, all of the characters being attired in a manner we would expect. Perhaps, Mat Burke’s disarrayed clothes after his two-day bar binge were the most striking.

A final word should be said about the quality of the work of the Metropolitan Theatre led by Alex Roe, Artistic Director. This reviewer has seen a number of plays by this interesting company, and has never been disappointed. The Metropolitan was founded in 1992, and is dedicated to performing plays from America’s literary past, plays based on American history, and plays from around the world that relate to these core works. We have reason to be grateful to the staff of the Metropolitan and to many other Off-Broadway theatres that help enrich our theatre in New York City.

Dr. Robert Simpson McLean,

Professor Emeritus,

City University of New York

BroadwayWorld.com

Metropolitan Playhouse presents Anna Christie, by Eugene O’Neill, at the theater (220 E 4th Street) November 14th through December 14th, 2008. Directed by Robert Kalfin, the production features Sam Tsoutsouvas, Jenne Vath, and Roger Clark as Chris, Anna, and Mat.

Anna Christie , one of O’Neill’s earlier full-length plays, is as tender and hopeful a vision as can be found among the fallen angels in the playwright’s bittersweet universe. Anna, the ‘ruined’ daughter come East to find her estranged father finds him both less and more than she hoped, while the love she makes with boiler stoker Mat Burke threatens to destroy all three of their yearning souls. Impassioned and strangely innocent, the central characters of Anna Christie are haunting and profound.

Metropolitan promises an especially affecting production in its intimate downtown home, where each audience of 50 patrons will feel the play’s power up close. The production is directed by Robert Kalfin. Mr. Kalfin’s long career began with the founding of New York’s Chelsea Theatre Center, (winner for its work of 5 Tony Awards, 4 Ton Nominations and 21 Obie Awards.) Director on Broadway and off, across America and Canada, and in Europe, the Middle East and as far abroad as Siberia, his credits include Strider, Happy End (starring Meryl Streep and Christopher Lloyd), and Yentl (starring Tovah Feldshuh.) Most recently for Metropolitan, Mr. Kalfin directed Israel Zangwill’s The Melting Pot in 2006.

Featured in the production is Sam Tsoutsouvas as Chris Christopherson. Mr. Tsoutsouvas, a graduate of Juilliard’s Group I, has a distinguished career includes appearances on Broadway (By Jeeves, directed by Alan Ayckbourn, Our Country’s Good, directed by Mark Lamos); Off-Broadway (CSC, The Public, Signature Thaeter, NY Shakespeare Festival, Playwrights Horizons); and in Regional theaters such as the Shakespeare Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Pittsburgh Public Theater, and Trinity Rep. Along with Mr. Tsoutsouvas are,as Anna, Jenne Vath, whose work about New York City includes La Mama’s striking revival of The Tooth of Crime, and widely ranging international actor Roger Clark, making his New York debut as Mat Burke. Rounding out the cast are Joe Atack, Nick Delany, Ian Campbell Dunn, Zakary Spicer, Rob Sulaver, Karen Christie-Ward, Zachary Spicer, and Rob Sulaver.

Metropolitan Playhouse is New York’s home for American drama, exploring our theatrical heritage and creating new plays of American historical and cultural moment. Hailed by Backstage Magazine as "dedicated to the living examination of American theatre history", Metropolitan has earned accolades fromThe New York Times, The Village Voice, and nytheatre.com for its ongoing mission to produce theater that illuminates who we are by revealing where we have come from. Recent triumphs include Nowadays,Year One of the Empire, The Pioneer: 5 plays by Eugene O’Neill, Denial and The Melting Pot, as well as theAlphabet City and East Village Chronicles series and last year’s Hawthornucopia.

Anna Christie begins five previews on Friday, November 14, and opens Friday, November 21 to run through Sunday, December 14. Show times are Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm; Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm. Sundays (11/30 and 12/7) at 7:30 pm. There will be a special, Pay-What-You-Will performance on Monday, November 17 at 7:30 pm.

Reviewed by Mark Peikert

Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie is not a great play, despite its Pulitzer Prize and famous Garbo-starring film version. And unfortunately, the Metropolitan Playhouse's stripped-down production highlights the play's greatest faults, from the weak dialogue to the melodramatic plot.

What might seem less affected on a Broadway stage — or the silver screen — comes across as loud, repetitive, and over the top in the small Metropolitan Playhouse. The outsized emotions of former prostitute Anna, her sailor father, Chris; and her lover Mat as they try to live happily on the sea in 1910 come across as cheaper and less insistent when the actors are just a foot or two away from the audience. Nor does it help that director Robert Z. Kalfin has allowed his three main actors to yell a great deal, especially Roger Clark as Mat, who seems to have turned his volume dial up to 11 and then broken it off during intermission, though his Irish accent is always superb, even at a full roar. Likewise, Sam Tsoutsouvas' Swedish accent as Anna's father is unassailable, though no doubt it helped that O'Neill wrote the same lines over and over for Chris.

But where the production runs into trouble is Jenne Vath as Anna. Looking like a battered kewpie doll, Vath holds her own in the climactic third act, when she finally sits her father and Mat down and spills her past; but there are times when her performance wobbles. By emphasizing the comedy during dramatic moments (presumably under Kalfin's direction), Vath gets the laugh but costs the moment some reality, while her switching vocal registers with dizzying speed adds a touch of drag queen to her characterization.

If Kalfin could tone the production — and his actors — down, then Anna Christie might have another triumphant return to New York City. But right now the play feels far too big for such a small theatre.

Curtain Up

By Paulanne Simmons

Anna Christie, one of Eugene O'Neill's earliest plays, is the work of a young man who still believes in innocence and goodness. What makes it unusual is that O'Neill imparts this message through a play about a woman who succumbed to a life of prostitution after being abandoned by her sailor father and left in the care of abusive relatives. And he did it in 1921.

The play begins when Anna, sick and friendless, seeks refuge with her father, who is now captain of a coal barge that never leaves port. Through a happy set of circumstances, Anna falls in love with a coal stoker her father rescues from drowning. After overcoming numerous difficulties, including her father's initial opposition and the revealing of her own shady past, the two decide to marry and, presumably, live happily ever after.

Anna Christie is a surprising play for several reasons. Unlike most of O'Neill's work, it ends happily. And unlike most melodramas of its era, it is both respected and frequently performed today.

What is it that makes Anna Christie so enduring? Most probably a combination of O'Neill's gift for creating believable characters and making poetry flow from their lips so naturally the audience forgets these are the words of a skilled artist.

Metropolitan Playhouse's staging, directed by Robert Z. Kalfin, is a simple, low-cost production. It actually benefits from the small stage. The intimate theater effectively illustrates the confined world in which Anna lives. But the real pillar of this production is Sam Tsoutsouvas, a fine actor whose portrayal of Anna's father, the crusty captain, Chris Christopherson, is nothing short of perfection.

It was O'Neill's great genius that allowed him to turn a man who took little interest in his wife and less in his daughter, into a gentle hero — a man who has been misled but never wanted to hurt anyone or do evil. It is Tsoutsouvas's great talent that allows him to breathe life into that character. He looks, sounds and moves so much like the captain one can almost smell the salt water inside the theater.

Roger Clark is also outstanding as the handsome, passionate, pious and somewhat hypocritical Mat Burke, who finds himself bound to Anna in spite of her past. This is no small accomplishment, considering how outdated the character is in our much more permissive times.

Jenne Vath completes the triangle with her restrained portrayal of Anna, a woman who is down but not yet out. Anna can chug her liquor but still clings to her dignity. She knows she's damaged goods, but despite the fate that most probably awaits her, she refuses to give up. Vath effortlessly conveys both the hope and the despair.

Paul Hudson's subdued lighting and Michael Anania's rustic set, with ropes suspended from above being the principal indication of the sea and the ship, keep O'Neill's universal themes of love and hope firmly anchored in time and place.

Kalfin has wisely given himself modest goals. He has not sought to reinterpret O'Neill, add unnecessary bells and whistles or give the play a modern context. He has instead trusted that his audience will be able to accept the play on its own terms and because of the strength of O'Neill's splendid gift for dialogue. His instincts have proved correct.

New Theatre Corps

Reviewed by Amanda Halkiotis

Eighty years after this play granted Eugene O'Neill his second Pulitzer, the weighty drama of this...well, weighty drama...still grabs hold of the audience. From the man who knew family dysfunction better than most, the Metropolitan Playhouse has produced a classic interpretation without skimping on the fight scenes.

Whether searching for family ties or cultural identity, the characters in Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie resonate with a longing for stability and a place to belong, universal themes that still apply today. This turn-of-the-century story about an immigrant’s working-class life in lower Manhattan speaks, on many levels, to what it means to leave one home behind in order to discover another, as many New Yorkers (even today) once did.

The play begins at a pub as the drunken Anna Christie (the stunning Jenne Vath) gets to work. She orders a drink, swills it quickly and asks the barkeep, Larry (Zachary Spicer), for another while she waits for her father Chris Christopherson (Sam Tsoutsouvas) to show up. As for Chris, a bumbling widower cloaked in layers of gray flannel and a fitted fisherman’s cap that he almost never removes, he has never known how to care or provide for his daughter. His heartbreaking dilemma is that that’s never kept him from loving for her. His abandoning her to distant relatives as a girl, for example, he sees as leaving her better off while he braves the high seas, fulfilling the long legacy of seafarers in his family. In choosing this life for himself he also determines Anna’s, and this attempt to take control of one’s fate backfires more than once as the play ensues. Mr. Tsoutsouvas takes a simple, uneducated character and breathes life into his lines, perfecting a thick Swedish accent to match the script’s dialectical phrasing of broken English.

Through four engrossing acts Anna’s fighting spirit shows a stomach for rough travels and tough times. Fighting to keep her head above water--even when surrounded by it-– she tries to leave behind a soiled past in order to win the heart of the honest Irish-Catholic coal stoker, Mat Burke (a subtle yet effective Roger Clark). No matter Anna’s temperament, whether vulnerable, irrational, defensive, desperate, or even at times daring and giddy, Mr. Clark plays off her with gradual, believable reactions. Even in a three-piece suit and clean-shaven mug on his way to propose to Anna, his brute masculinity shows through. Once again, background and occupation imply a character’s lot in life, and Anna, in answering Mat, must ultimately also answer to her own fate. An added flourish to Mr. Clark’s performance is the genuine rogue accent acquired from years of studying his craft in Ireland.

The three principle actors are matched by a great supporting cast (including an incorrigible Karen Christie-Ward and a snappy Mr. Spicer). Robert Z. Kalfin directs down to the smallest details, even dressing the set with vintage magazines and newspapers. With the help of set designer Michael Anania, Mr. Kalfin uses a few specific pieces of coarse wooden furniture to give the illusion of larger areas, such as showing just a table and tap, but evoking an entire bar. The costumes (designed by Rebecca J. Bernstein), ocean sound effects, and lilting guitar instrumentals just add finishing touches to an already strong production.

With a strong sense of scene and driving action that doesn’t falter even after two and a half hours, the Metropolitan Playhouse takes its audience along for the ride of Anna Christie. By simply sitting still with rapt attention we let O’Neill’s characters discover for themselves the paths they choose, and the moments in life that must be taken with a grain of sea salt.

Irish Echo

By Joseph Hurley

Nearly ninety years after its premiere, “Anna Christie,” despite a fair amount of awkward, ungainly writing, still packs a punch. Under Robert Kalfin’s canny direction at the Metropolitan, the triangular balance between O’Neill’s three major characters, Chris, Anna and Mat, is relentlessly
intense, entirely alive and virtually flawless.
In one sense, Kalfin’s inspired production is more than normally focused on Chris, beautifully played by stage veteran Sam Tsoutsouvas in a compelling performance. As Anna, Jenne Vath comes across as somewhat more mature than the twenty years O’Neill’s text attributes to her. This potential stumbling block, however, is successfully averted by the credible father-daughter relationship Vath and Tsoutsouvas have managed to achieve.
Actor Roger Clark is everything that Mat Burke, the Irishman saved from the sea It’s the season for giving. Let the Irish Echo Gift Guide advertisers help you find the perfect present! by members of old Chris’ barge crew, should ideally be: powerful, reckless, charming, and with a touch of innocence.
Clark conveys Mat’s complicated relationship with Anna in a wholly credible way, and the burgeoning bond between them is believable and moving.
In the new production, strong support is provided by Karen Christie-Ward as Marthy Owen, Chris’ lady friend, Zachery Spicer as Larry, the barman, and Joe Atack as Johnny-the-Priest. Set designer Michael Anania has put an amazing amount of the play’s world on the Metropolitan Playhouse’s small playing area. The harborside saloon, the barge deck, and vessel’s cabin are all present, albeit in fragmentary form.
O’Neill’s play is all too often dismissed as a clumsy romantic melodrama, notable mainly for having, in l930, provided Greta Garbo with her first sound role. But anyone looking for proof of the real value of “Anna Christie” would do well to check out the version currently energizing the stage at the Metropolitan Playhouse.

Review by Lucile Scott

Like many Eugene O'Neill plays, Anna Christie deals with the illusions that get O'Neill's somewhat wayward characters through the day and what happens when they lose them. But unlike in his more famous works, like The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night—which were written 20-some-odd years after this piece premiered in 1920—the characters find hope in the truth and begin to move forward. The play also focuses on sexism and sexist double standards, which, while less shocking or controversial than they must have been nearly 90 years ago, are still sadly quite relevant.

The production, directed by Robert Kalfin, faithfully sticks to O'Neill's vision and the time period with costume, set, and effects. A large mural of a sunny cloud-dotted sky covering the back wall and two rope nets evoke the sea well.

In the play, Anna Christie decides to travel from the Midwest to the East Coast to find her sailor father, who 15 years before had dropped her off to be raised by the farmer relatives he believed—mistakenly—could give her a better, more decent life. In reality they abused her, both sexually and through overwork, and at 16 she ran away, eventually becoming a prostitute. Her father, Chris Christopherson, and her sailor love interest, Mat Burke, do not want to know the truth about Anna's life and must grapple to see if they can reconcile their ideas of femininity with her reality. And that sets up the basic dichotomies of this play in which the characters often see in black and white but are forced to view gray by curtain. There is East v. West; sea v. land; decent v. not decent; free v. trapped.

Christopherson is a manifestly irresponsible man who abandoned his family for the sea, and blames "that devil sea," as he calls it, for all he has done and not done instead of taking responsibility for his actions. Sam Tsoutsouvas plays him with an almost childlike sweetness, intensified by a Swedish accent and uncertain shuffling movements, that makes the character endearing and sympathetic despite his abandonment and desire not to know the truth or accept blame for the life he has been left with. Roger Clark's Mat Burke is a cocky muscular man's man. He is full of himself and full of life and love, for Anna and for the sea. Jenne Vath has been somewhat miscast as Anna, who the script specifies is 20 years old. Vath is well out of her 20s, causing Anna's youthful scrappiness, sassiness, and approach to love to fall a little flat. Certain scenes drag, despite the competent acting, because some of the drama and stakes rely on the impact of flinging brutal words and situations at someone who is barely an adult.

All three have ended up on a coal barge in the ocean together and all three got there through a combination of choice and lack of choices. Chris views the sea as an evil trap, Anna sees it as cleansing, and Matt as freedom, but no matter what their view of their watery fate, the takeaway seems to be that to better navigate the unpredictable waters all they need is to be there for each other, dichotomies be damned.


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