More Stately Mansions

Reviewed by Holly Bartges

Right up front where it counts most, Germinal Stage Denver’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Touch of the Poet should not be missed. This classic piece of theatre from one of America’s greatest playwrights, a Pulitzer Prize winner four times, and the Nobel Prize for American literature, is a masterpiece. O’Neill’s innate perception to put the American Dream, and failure to achieve such, into flesh and blood human nature remains legendary. His eyesight goes far beyond the eyes in his head. Matched only by his masterful wording.

Zachary M. Andrews, left, plays Simon, and L. Corwin Christie is Sara in Eugene O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions, the sequel to his A Touch of the Poet.

Even though Eugene O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions continues the odyssey of the Melody and Harford families portrayed in A Touch of the Poet, first glance at the stage setting indicates this is going to be something quite different.

The realism in A Touch of the Poet fades into a surrealistic expressionism. In the center back wall, a doorway. On either side the wall is covered in masks. Seven benches of different lengths are deliberately placed in a stylized structure across the Germinal Stage Denver’s playing area.

Directed and designed by Ed Baierlein, the cohesive electric five-actor cast dominates the story with a crackling chemistry every theatre hopes to achieve.

As far as anyone has been able to determine, this is the first time a theatre produced A Touch of the Poet and More Stately Mansions back to back.

O’Neill wanted to write a nine play sequel following the Melody and Harford families from Pre Revolutionary days. Unfortunately, he died before the completed the overwhelming project. Just prior to his death, O’Neill and his wife, Carlotta burned his unfinished scripts. Somehow, a rough draft of More Stately Mansions survived. After O’Neill’s death, against his wishes, Carlotta engaged Karl Ragner Gierow of the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre to shape it into a working script. With Baierlein’s ability to climb inside a script making it his own, GSD’s production makes the eyes pop, the mouth fly open, and take the breath away.

Four years have transpired since A Touch of the Poet, still near Boston, More Stately Mansions takes place between 1836 and 1841. Sara Melody and Simon Harford are now married. L. Corwin Christie continues in the role of Sara. As a spit-fire young girl, full of life and determination, unafraid to stand up to anyone, Christie transforms Sara into a strong, conniving, manipulative, desperate woman dependent on Simon, creating a strong dependence for him on her, so she wishes.

Zachary M. Andrews takes on the role of Simon, trapped in a tug of war, love, and dependence between Sara, and his mother Deborah. The human trap having squeezed life out of him; Simon reverts to little-boy behavior with his mind swimming in a vast ocean of confused decay. Andrews’ expressive eyes speak volumes, even through the masks he wears.

Lori Hansen, who played Nora Melody in A Touch of the Poet, takes on the role of Deborah Harford with an eerie depth of perception revealing a blackened lost-in-the-woods soul. Her husband having died two days before the beginning of the play, the family fortune in shambles, reflecting the industrial revolution engulfing them, Deborah moved into the summerhouse, forbidding anyone to enter. Her mind wanders loose out its cage freely, playfully, colored in mean streaks cutting between Simon’s idealistic and materialistic natures. Much of her mental wanderings can be controlled with moments of lucid thoughts, leading one to believe this woman has deliberately calculated her mental illness to own that which she can never own, her son, through possessive love. Hating Sara and the four children, Deborah determines to love again claiming she wants to be an unselfish mother and grandmother. Sneering, Simon asks her directly “are you still the actor you always were?” Ready with an answer, Deborah retorts, “Now there is no audience.”

Choreographed in slow motion, the characters all wear masks revealing a dance of tortured death. From which no one can escape.

Sallie Diamond’s costumes pertain to the period with a touch of elegance hiding behind torn fabric and spider webbed lace symbolic of the agonized torn apart souls hiding far away from masked personas.

As the characters project their outward personas, the masks, the costumes, the dance reveals the tortured humanity living inside each one. Periodically they change masks from the back wall, to reflect a deeper horror emerging from the inside. Periodically, they remove the masks to speak that which is directly on their minds.

Erica Sarzin-Borrillo created the multitude of masks illuminating the myriad of emotions fighting to get out of these hungry foreboding characters.

Andrew Schmidt takes on the role of Joel Harford, Simon’s estranged brother. His expression of jealous arrogant disdain for his life and family position captivate close scrutiny, tantalizing the spine in shudders.

Eric Victor embodies the family lawyer, Nicholas Gadsby, with a plan to save the family fortune by turning control over to Simon. He also effectively changes gears to take on the role of Banker, Benjamin Tanard.

The title comes from Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem The Chambered Nautilus, “Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul.”

Eerie, challenging, provocative, this honest psychological thriller can only lead to tragedy, which it does, at the end, when they take off their masks for the final time, leaving one to ponder where O’Neill planned to take this fractured family.

More Stately Mansions is simply a striking masterful piece of work from the inside out, as are the actors with their characters.

To miss this magnificent production would be a tragedy all to itself. Shopping and baking can wait. Make reservations now!