Richardson’s contribution to the long line of Annas is this quality of blasted innocence. She’s lost that purity at the hands of the Minnesota relatives to whom her father, the bitter old Swedish sea dog Chris Christopherson (Rip Torn), sent her. Returning after many years, Anna includes him in her litany of hatred for men. Richardson captures the poignance and curdled sweetness of Anna, but not the archetypal force that would help O’Neill’s 1921 Pulitzer Prize winner transcend its status as a period piece. Still, this period piece is solid oak, part of the furniture of the American theater. As staged by Englishman David Leveaux, this production brings a surprising charm to O’Neill’s brooding power. Torn, that master of the offbeat, gives all sorts of beguiling rhythms to Chris, who’s spent his life in a love-hate marriage with “dat ole davil, sea.” But the anchor performance is by Liam Neeson as Mat Burke, the Irish stoker whose love restores Anna’s humanity. Neeson is a seething furnace of what used to be called animal magnetism. And he does something fiendishly difficult-he projects the quality of utter simplicity. Neeson embodies that madonna-whore double whammy of O’Neill, who was drawn to the badness in good girls and the goodness in bad girls. And he has a brawny sincerity that makes the ambiguous ending about as happy as O’Neill, that gourmand of tragedy, ever got.
