Anna Christie

A Donmar Warehouse presentation of the play in 2 functions by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Take advantage of Ashford. Anna Christopherson - Ruth WilsonMat Burke - Jude Law Chris Christopherson - David Hayman Marthy Owen - Jenny Galloway Ray - Henry Pettigrew Johnny the Priest - Paul Brightwell First Longshireman - Michael WaltersSecond Longshoreman - Matt Wilman Mail carrier - Robert LonsdaleThe ocean roars, plumes of sunshine ignite billowing fog, rain cascades lower the rear of the set, cries from the shipwrecked rend the environment, physiques of children crawl up from waves. All of a sudden, just like a brutish, wounded animal hurled up in the deep, Jude Law's gasping, drenched, semi-naked body heaves itself shuddering onto when, skidding lower the vertiginously high rake of Paul Wills' astonishingly versatile set. O'Neill did not write the stunningly staged storm scene, but it is essential to Take advantage of Ashford's visionary staging of "Anna Christie." Ashford's grip about this frequently melodramatic story of redemption is apparent from the outlet. As Howard Harrison's chilly lights cut over the Donmar's bare thrust stage, stars surge in, filling the home with energy because they build the dockside consuming living room beneath Adam Cork's suggestive, rising soundscape. This mixture of literal location along with a more mythic, physical world not just talks to O'Neill's self-conscious poetry it charges up what's frequently a static play. Moving cigarette ash away with neurotic abandon, pale Anna (Ruth Wilson) teeters in, stung with exhaustion. Her lipsticked gash of the mouth hanging slightly open, she looks both youthful and worn-through as she surveys her future, cracked because it is by her past. After fifteen years inside a horror-filled childhood on the farm, she's eager for relaxation. She's since been being employed as whore, a well known fact stored from her enraptured, staunchly sentimental father, Chris Christopherson, performed with fierce authenticity with a weather-beaten David Hayman inside a gruff, perfectly sing-song period Swedish accent. So when the storm washes stoker Pad Burke (Law) aboard her father's coal barge, it's obvious using their electrifying connection he and Anna take presctiption opposite sides of the fated union. O'Neill never was a author to embrace understatement, and there is not really a single thought within this play he is not at great pains to overexpress. That explanatory character is further complicated by O'Neill's passion for dualities -- Mat's yearning for love on land versus. the passion for the ocean, Anna's "depravity" versus. her idealized innocence, the strain between her hidden past and the imagined-of future. To try to naturalize or, rather, reduce the effects of everything right into a comfortable middle range would render it absurd, and that's why Ashford does not shrink from finding laughs in Christopherson's constant references towards the demon that's the ocean, as well as why he encourages his stars to embrace the elemental character from the writing. In true O'Neill fashion, the lovers' mutual longing is outfitted in torment. As she struggles between self-disgust and flickers of wrenching hope, Wilson ricochets hypnotically between taut physical defiance and tremulousness without ever falling into overt display, a restraint that keeps audienecs speculating. When Mat's vision of her is shattered through the thought of her whoring past, Law hoists an iron bedstead aloft and jams it lower, but never allows his anger boil over into indiscriminate, actorly shouting. Angered through the wheedling father who stands together, he literally picks him up, making Hayman seem like Tom Thumb. But Law, opting for broke having a wealthy Irish accent, also discloses Pad like a naive dreamer. When he informs Anna "I'd prefer buddies along with you than other things on the planet,Inch he directs his longing out in the ocean, partially from shyness and partially since the ocean's haunting presence ironically signifies security: It's all regulated he truly knows. The production's hallmark is its boldness. This can be a creative team employed in amazing harmony. The clearness from the thinking shows through Wills' costuming, which provides the mariners necessary heft and weigh -- except Hayman, whose baggy clothes help him look useless from inside, and Anna, whose translucent fabric lightly stresses her fragility, an excellent highlit by Harrison wrapping her in toplight. "Anna Christie" isn't staged, largely because of its ending awash with precariously unearned feelings. However these stars bring such three-dimensional conviction towards the play that unpredicted hope is tempered with a serious pain of sadness. Ashford's grippingly rooted, operatic production not just makes the perfect situation with this seriously problematic drama celebrate you lengthy to determine exactly what the helmer might do about the operatic stage proper. "Peter Grimes," anybody?Sets and costumes, Paul Wills lighting, Howard Harrison music and seem, Adam Cork production stage manager, Michael Dennis. Opened up, examined August. 11, 2011. Running time: 2 Hrs, 30 MIN. Contact David Benedict at benedictdavid@mac.com