In the Zone

More than a century ago, the Provincetown Players turned down Eugene O’Neill’s In the Zone for production, perhaps because the company disliked the apparent conventionality of the piece. The adventurous troupe preferred O’Neill’s other sea-themed Glencairn plays, which more fully engage with experimental naturalism, eschewing potboiler techniques for a poetic beauty and simplicity. With its melodramatic plot twists, In the Zone seemed better suited for the commercial stage. In fact, the spooky drama did find a more conventional home when the Washington Square Players opened it on Halloween of 1917, and the piece was subsequently performed on the vaudeville circuit. Its reputation as the most mainstream of O’Neill’s early sea plays was cemented.Nothing could be further from that conventionality than Mariner Theatrical’s revival of In the Zone on board the 1885 tall ship Wavertree at South Street Seaport in New York City. Audience members who were able to catch the one-weekend run were able to either sit in chairs brought onboard or recline in bunks as they watched the play unfold in the actual crew’s quarters of the historic ship. Since In the Zone was the maiden voyage of Mariner Theatrical, few audience members knew what to expect. The multiethnic cast, occasionally bending genders, performed in costumes that evoked the early twentieth century without necessarily trying to imitate it, flaunting modern labels and unashamedly displaying body piercings more commonly seen in the East Village than on World War I mariners in the North Atlantic. Rather than spoiling the mood of the historic setting, however, these nods to the twenty-first century seemed to evoke a can-do atmosphere, perhaps exemplified by the fact that no costume designer was credited, and the cast and crew appear to have collaborated to come up with an array of clothing that worked. This invited the audience to come along for a ride that looked like it might take us anywhere.Live music performed by the Irish folk group Faoileán added tremendously to the experience. Playing both before the performance and at key moments during the action, the band provided a soundtrack that frequently set the mood, whether joyous, melancholy, or suspenseful. This was extra important since the audience was positioned in the round, watching events unfold in a space never meant to be a stage. Providing clear sight lines for everyone, including audience members positioned in bunks, would simply have been impossible. To make sure everyone understood what was happening, stage directions were read by a narrator: Captain Jack Tunney. This served the double purpose of making each action clear while also providing the audience with some of O’Neill’s deliciously idiosyncratic stage descriptions.The action of the play centers around Smitty, played by Matthew Russell, a mysterious sailor who comes to be suspected of sabotage as the ship finds itself in the zone of combat during the Great War. Russell’s secretive portrayal of the character made it seem equally likely that he was a German spy or a wrongly suspected outsider. Smitty’s opening actions hiding a mysterious box are observed by Davis (Christopher-Rashee Stevenson) and Scotty (Damien Hughes). The American sailor Jack (Jaz Astwood) wants to give Smitty the benefit of the doubt, but with the ship loaded with ammunition for the war, other crew members do not want to take any chances. Director Andy Sowers had the sailors in this production crawl out of their bunks while narrowly avoiding the tightly packed audience, which was no small feat. This staging made the production feel truly immersive, since a mariner’s arm or leg could emerge beside you at any moment.When the crew gets hold of the box that Smitty hid, they find it full of love letters from a woman named Edith, which are read aloud by Driscoll (Sam Gibbs). Other crew members like Cocky and Swanson (Stuart Gray and Žilvinas Jonušas) respond first in horror and then in shame to the contents of the letters. The audience, so physically close to the action, could not help but feel like voyeurs, eavesdropping on the most personal moments of Smitty’s private life. By the time the play ended, we were ready to slink back into our bunks with the rest of the crew. Those who opted for bunks to watch the play from were fortunately already there.With such a short run, limited rehearsal time, and a challenging performance space, smooth sailing was not to be expected. In fact, at the performance I attended, a couple of actors had to call for their lines once or twice, but with a narrator already on book, these moments passed quickly and with minimal disruption. The rough-and-ready feel of these minor bumps seemed to blend in with O’Neill’s writing, so filled with energy in this early play, but still lacking in the sophistication he would acquire as a more mature artist. Like with so many of O’Neill’s early works, the rough patches were noticeable but somehow seemed to add to the charm of the piece rather than take away from it. The brevity of this early one-act play also suited the novel and sometimes awkward nature of the production. I cannot imagine lying on a stiff wooden bunk and craning my neck for three hours to watch Long Day’s Journey Into Night.As quaint as it was to watch a nautical play on board an actual ship, few vessels built in the 1880s are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act. Organizers of the event sent out a special email warning of “ladder-like steps” that audience members would have to navigate to reach the performance space. Fortunately, the hardy audience did not seem to have much of a problem. I attended with my eighty-two-year-old mother, who walked the gangway up to the ship without a grumble and seemed to enjoy herself immensely, though she is not generally a fan of O’Neill. In spite of my initial concerns, this production turned out to be “accessible” in more ways than one.Sowers, who previously worked with the avant-garde troupe the Neo-Futurists on The Complete & Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O’Neill, helmed this production with panache. However, he could not have managed it so successfully without the music direction of Faoileán’s front man Nathan Bishop. Sowers’s staging and Bishop’s ongoing musical score complemented one another throughout the production. Both supported O’Neill’s text and sometimes even covered for dialogue and plot devices that in this early work might seem a bit ham-fisted by today’s standards. I look forward to Mariner Theatrical’s next venture and can only hope they produce more of O’Neill’s work in the future.