a bitter comedy about the clash between dreams and reality
During World War II, financially secured by the Nobel Prize, Eugene O’Neill, the most famous American playwright of the time, began writing an epic series of plays (in addition to the heavily autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night). He gave it the working title A Tale of Possessors Self-dispossessed, and it was to chart American history from the Declaration of Independence to the economic crisis of the 1930s. O’Neill completed only one of the plays in this grand plan, though it was a thrilling one. It was a bitter comedy about his main theme in life, the ambiguous role of lies and illusion in human life, which he called A Touch of the Poet. It was not to reach the stage until several years after his death, but today we count it among the highlights of his extensive body of work.
The main character in this suggestive drama, which takes place near Boston in 1828, is the Irish immigrant Cornelius Melody, the proud and temperamental owner of a dilapidated inn. Cornelius, nicknamed Con, had fled to America from Ireland after losing his social status as the result of a scandal. Even in America he is drowning in debt, but still clings tightly to his noble identity as a landowner and war hero. He constantly admonishes his wife and daughter for the slightest indication of any betrayal of their humble Irish roots. The story heats up when his daughter Sara falls in love with a wealthy American guest staying at their inn. Cornelius’s desire to maintain the illusion of his high status at all costs leads through many original twists and turns to an explosive tragicomic culmination.
This poetic, entertaining and tragic play is returning to the Czech stage for the first time since 1972, and the outstanding director Hana Burešová, who specialises tirelessly in presenting forgotten gems of world drama, is also returning to Brno City Theatre with it following a short break.
