“Ghosts of Provincetown” – 9/2 performance, at New World Stage #5

MY RATING: $5 – Though the second play was sweet and clever, it’s not worth your money or your time to sit through the first play

What if Captain Ahab had married? It certainly wouldn’t have stopped him from going to sea in search of his Folly. But it also wouldn’t have stopped him from dragging the little lady out to sea with him, either. Ahab’s passion drove him mad, and would likely have done the same to Mrs. Ahab as well.

Now imagine if Mr. and Mrs. Ahab had never crossed paths with the great White Whale in the first place. You’d still find him asea, pursuing whales, as many whales as he could reach. His passion wouldn’t be focused on capturing the greatest whale in the ocean, but in being the greatest whaling captain on the Seven Seas.

Such a man is Captain David Keeney. And Eugene O’Neill’s “Ile”, one half of the Ghosts of Provincetown program put on by Moses Mogilee Productions at New World Stage #5, tells the story of Capt. Keeney and his wife, Annie trapped in ice after two years of pursuing whales for their oil, “ile” in the Down East accent.

It’s a 30-minute play, so this synopsis will be similarly short: It’s the beginning of summer in the Bering Sea. A whaling ship is held fast in the ice as the crew’s two-year contract expires.

Capt. Keeney is beset by mutinous crewmen on one side (whose chief weapon is, apparently, litigation) and a distraught wife on the other side. When the ice breaks, two lives will be on the line.

Let’s pick on O’Neill first, shall we? This is not an important play, even when compared with his other one-acts (“Bound East for Cardiff” or “The Long Voyage,” for example), but it does have a great dramatic Conflict built into the story.

Problem is, O’Neill doesn’t explore the source of the conflict, only the outcome. It seems the only reason Annie Keeney wanted to go on a two-year voyage with her husband was because she couldn’t have children and was bored at home. This is not the basis for great theatre.

Then again, why did Keeney agree to take her along? He’s a stubborn and proud man (“I’ve got to git the ile!”), which makes it hard to believe that he’d give in to a woman’s tears. O’Neill shortchanges Keeney’s character again by making him cringe at the prospect of returning to port without a ship full of oil, and being laughed at by the other Captains.

The play’s one saving grace is the Conflict between two people on the edge; it was the one thing that director Jesse Marchese needed to get right for this play to work.

It didn’t work.

For one thing, Scarlet Thiele is miscast as Mrs. Keeney, unless we can believe that a ship captain’s wife travels with a home spa.

Thiele is woefully unprepared by life to handle a character with such a tenuous hold on sanity. When she says “I’ll go mad”, it’s an empty threat, for there’s no hint of madness in her eyes. The only sign she might be losing her grip comes from her earnest hand-wringing.

When Thiele strides deliberately across the room toward the end of the play, it’s nothing more than a fit of pique. It’s too purposeful, when she should be careening out of control. Her wild piano playing seems to be her attempt at pissing off her husband, rather than an expression of the darkness enveloping her soul.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Capt. Keeney is played by Brandon Hughes, boyish despite his beard. Without a lot of sea miles under his sea legs Hughes lacks presence, his entrance a walk-on, nothing more. There should be restraint in the Captain’s performance, but, like Bill Sykes on Prozac, there was no passion for Hughes to restrain.

O’Neill’s play dances on a knife’s edge. The success of “Ile” depends on how well the actress playing Mrs. Keeney wears her distress on the inside, and how well Capt. Keeney wears his distress on the outside. Neither Thiele nor Hughes are up to the modest demands that O’Neill’s brief play makes on what should be two middle-aged actors.

Eschewing an intermission, Marchese chose to segue from Annie Kenney’s play-concluding recital of Schoenberg right into Louise Bryant’s anti-war allegory “The Game”, with strobe lights a-flashin’ and crewmen a-set changin’

A character, whom we learn is Life, calls out seemingly random numbers. She’s soon accosted by Death, and we find out that they are two acquaintances from long ago, who’ve met often at the Universe’s gaming table. “Forget your losses”, the Devil invites Life, “and play again.”

“The Game” has much the same tone as the old familiar God-vs-Satan wrasslin’s over Job or Daniel Webster or some other such pour soul. Life doesn’t mind losing the game when Kings or soldiers are at stake. After all, World War I is raging and if all the kings and soldiers are dead, war will cease.

In walks a guitar-wielding youth, in the same situation as Job, ready to curse God and die because he has the gift of music, but no one to share it with. “Without Love, I can’t create Beauty.”

He shakes Death’s hand (“I’ve been looking for you for weeks”) but shakes off Life. (“I’m through with you!”). But Life pleads with Youth to reconsider: “It was desire, not love.” This sets up the subtext of the play, how we confuse desire with love, to our own enduring unhappiness.

As his fate is settled at the gaming table, an Actress walks in, seeking death because she, too, is not loved, even though she is desired by the hordes. Her fate, too, will be decided by a single roll of the dice.

Both Death and Life understand the game and accept its consequences, even though a single roll can bring doom to more than one. And Life cannot bear to lose a single game, as Death observes: “You play to win, I play for fun.”

It was consistently well-acted by all four participants: as “Death”, Collin Ware radiates just the right amount of smugness, knowing Death will always win in the end; and Joe Berardi as “Youth”, whose troubled artistic soul must create Beauty in order to live.

Compliments to Anna Mosher as the “Girl,” for her brief Duncanesque interpretive dance. As the play ends, “Life”, gently played by Jen Gartner, resumes calling out numbers, and as she chokes back the tears, we suddenly realize what the numbers signify and why she’s crying.

While Bryant is overshadowed by O’Neill, her play is more deserving of this company. In fact I would love to see “The Game” paired with “Aria di Capo”, another allegorical anti-war play, by fellow Provincetowner Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Bryant’s little play was a refreshing palate-cleanser that should really have opened the show (in front of a curtain). Because of “Ile”, the whole program had the feel of a High School drama club production. Or perhaps a third-string NYU black box staging somewhere in the depths of the East Village.

The Moses Mogilee players are not quite ready for prime time. They’re freshly-minted college grads out on a spree. Let them have their fun dressing up as older people, but for deity’s sake don’t charge the public money for it, or ask to be taken seriously.

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