Touch of the Poet, A

Touch of the Poet, A (1958), a play by Eugene O'Neill. [Helen Hayes Theatre, 284 perf.] Cornelius Melody ( Eric Portman), who keeps an inn near Boston, is a tyrannical, boozy Irishman living off memories of his past importance. As a young soldier he fought with Wellington at Waterloo. “Con” dominates his submissive wife, Nora ( Helen Hayes), and even his more forthright, aggressive daughter, Sara ( Kim Stanley), and he regards his neighboring Yankees as beneath contempt. So when Sara falls in love with Simon, the son of a rich New Englander, and the family rejects Sara as a possible suitor, Con sets out to avenge the slight with a duel. Instead, he is beaten and humiliated. Returning home, he shoots his beloved old mare, thereby severing a last small link with his past. Destined as part of the eleven‐play cycle that O'Neill never finished, the play “has substance, a point of view, human principle and theatre,” as Brooks Atkinson observed. A 1977 Broadway revival with Jason Robards, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Kathryn Walker, directed by O'Neill specialist José Quintero, managed a run of 141 performances.