Review: ‘O’Neill’s Ghosts’ haunt Odyssey Theatre

To likely audiences for “O’Neill’s Ghosts,” the late Jovanka Bach’s biographically-based drama about playwright Eugene O’Neill, it shouldn’t come as any great surprise that her subject had plenty of them — two failed marriages, a disowned daughter and two suicidal sons indicate a man haunted by private misery as vast as his public acclaim.

Exploring parallels between O’Neill’s work and life, Bach’s faux-memory play returns to its 2003 launchpad at the Odyssey Theatre with a guest production helmed once again by her husband, producer/director John Stark.

Though anecdotes eclipse insight here, recurring patterns of addiction, narcissism and parental neglect illustrate how the sins of one generation replicate themselves in the next. Conflicts between O’Neill (John DiFusco) and his oldest son (Michael Vaccaro) echo the dysfunctions of O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece, “A Long Day’s Journey into Night.”

The play opens and closes on a fateful autumn day in 1950, with intervening scenes weaving flashbacks with overreaching dreamlike visions involving characters from “Journey.”

Potentially confusing transitions between past, present and imagination are apparent only through lighting shifts and a distracting foghorn sound cue stuck on gapless repeat.

DiFusco’s O’Neill evokes appropriately distracted obsession with writing, but in contrast to the ferocity in virtually every photograph of the celebrated author, his low-key, almost genial persona here comes across like someone who’s been dipping into the family painkillers.

Vaccaro’s histrionics err in the opposite direction; only Tom Groenwald manages a realistic and compelling turn, ironically as the fictionalized version of O’Neill’s self-destructive older brother.

Showing O’Neill working on a play years after neurological disease forced him to quit writing, and misstating the nature of a major character’s death are among the historical inaccuracies—or creative licenses, if you prefer—that limit the conclusions to be drawn about the complicated life of Eugene O’Neill.

“O’Neill’s Ghosts,” Odyssey Theatre, 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 28. $20. (310) 477-2055 or www.odysseytheatre.com. Running time: 2 hours.