STAGE REVIEW : San Francisco Celebrates O’Neill’s 100th Birthday

Los Angeles theater was too busy to do anything about Eugene O’Neill’s 100th birthday Sunday. But San Francisco gave him a party.

One could imagine O’Neill viewing Sunday afternoon’s celebration at the Geary Theatre, sponsored by the American Conservatory Theatre and the Eugene O’Neill Foundation, as a lot of society-dame nonsense--especially the part where they brought a cake on stage and everybody in the audience sang “Happy Birthday to You.”

Still, the event raised $5,000 for an artist-in-residence program at Tao House, O’Neill’s beloved mountaintop home in Danville. That wouldn’t have displeased him.

The scenes from his plays would have pleased him very much. First, he’d be reassured to see that they were all based on recent productions, a sign that his plays were still in circulation.

Second, he would be gratified to see that he can still make an audience listen. There is silence in the theater, and there is intense silence. The best of Sunday’s scenes achieved the latter.

Third, O’Neill would be interested to see that his plays can produce new readings, a sign that they are still among the quick, rather than the dead. There were some surprises on Sunday.

We started at the top, with “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” as staged by the Berkeley Rep. James Tyrone was his usual imperious self, as played by Ray Reinhardt--perhaps a bit less sure of himself than usual, but we recognized him.

But Angela Paton’s Mary Tyrone was new. Not a fog creature, but a faithful domestic servant who had served this family for years and was not about to be dislodged now. “I love you, too, dear--despite everything.”

An afternoon listening to this flat voice adumbrating her grievances could indeed drive a man to drink. Paton’s Mary Tyrone may come a bit too close to Lola in “Come Back, Little Sheba,” but it’s a useful corrective to the “lost” approach taken by almost everybody else.

It connected beautifully Sunday with Hickey’s monologue from “The Iceman Cometh,” performed by Paul Vincent O’Connor from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

Hickey is another of those O’Neill husbands who can’t stand to be forgiven by their women. He solves the problem by murdering his wife. O’Connor took us through the logic of it step-by step, without aping Jason Robards, who won’t be around to play this part forever.

Hickey’s not too far from the self-loathing Jamie Tyrone, represented Sunday by Will Marchetti, in a cutting from the Magic Theatre production of “Moon for the Misbegotten.” Nancy Houfek played Josie, the big farm girl. The scene went well enough, but this is one O’Neill play that can’t be dipped into--the audience has to spend the whole night on Josie’s porch.

Yank’s death scene from “Bound East for Cardiff” followed, as presented by a San Francisco group called Just So Productions. Paul Finocchiaro made it simply a question of the light going out of the character’s eyes, and we believed it. But the place to see this show is the boat where the group is presenting it in San Francisco harbor. (Information: (415) 434-1528.)

We closed with an O’Neill play that nobody has done in more than 20 years, “Marco Millions” (1928). ACT is currently presenting it, with guest artists from China, where part of the story is laid. (Marco is Marco Polo.)

The play seemed hopeless in its Lincoln Center revival in the early ‘60s: O’Neill’s attempt to do “Babbitt” in costume. But ACT’s Marco, Daniel Reichert, proved an amusing little shyster, and visiting actor Sun Daolin made the Kublai Khan a real character, not a fake-Oriental “presence.”

This “Marco Millions” might be worth a trip back to San Francisco. (It plays through early November; (415) 771-3880.)

Los Angeles’ one contribution to the O’Neill centennial is a new play about O’Neill--Louis LaRusso II’s “Sea Mother’s Son” at the Gene Dynarski Theatre. (Information: (213) 465-5600.)

This tells of what happened the year that young Gene O’Neill (Michael Pare) boarded with the Rippin family in New London. On this evidence, not much did.

The dialogue is unforgettable, in a way. “Shame on you, you hairy ape!” But most of it is also unspeakable--”I hope you still have some humility for pancakes”--and, sure enough, LaRusso’s actors can’t speak it. Not recommended, any year.