ANNA CHRISTIE RIDES THE TIDE AGAIN

An early O’Neill, boldly staged, will sweep you into a
fog-shrouded world of fate, forgiveness, and hard-won grace.

“A rich and salty play,” wrote one critic of Anna Christie when it premiered in New York in 1921. “Written with abundant imagination,” claimed another. Yet a third critic called the thirty-three-year-old Eugene O’Neill “the nearest thing to a genius America has yet to produce in the way of a playwright.”

Brian d’Arcy James and Joe Carroll

But its author grew to dislike the play intensely. “The very worst failure I have experienced,” O’Neill lamented, refusing to attend the premiere’s opening night. “I would pray for its closing next Saturday,” he said. He disowned it, requesting that his publisher exclude it from his next volume of collected plays.

Mare Winningham

Meanwhile, Anna Christie went on to earn O’Neill his second Pulitzer Prize and was famously filmed as a “talkie” in 1930, starring Greta Garbo. Her entrance line—“Give me a whiskey with ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby”—is now immortal.

Michelle Williams

Since then, Anna Christie has been revived roughly once a decade, though not since 1993 on Broadway (with Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson) and 2011 in London (at the Donmar Warehouse with Ruth Wilson and Jude Law).

Brian d’Arcy James and Michelle Williams

So what is it that drew Thomas Kail, the brilliant director of Hamilton and Sweeney Todd, to this early, flamboyant, non-realistic work? Here are some guesses: first, it provides a plum role for Kail’s wife, the estimable Michelle Williams; second, it gives Kail an exciting opportunity to show off the most imaginative direction on the New York stages thus far this season.

Tom Sturridge

In Anna Christie, O’Neill incorporates characters and experiences from his own years at sea in his twenties, when he lived a rough life and suffered from alcoholism, depression, and destitution. The play tells a symbolic tale of a young woman named Anna Christie (Williams) from Minnesota, who travels east to meet her father, Chris Christopherson (Brian d’Arcy James), whom she hasn’t seen in fifteen years. Chris emigrated from Sweden to the U.S. decades earlier and left his daughter in Minnesota to be raised by relatives while he embarked on a career as a coal-barge captain and sailed the seas.

Michelle Williams and Tom Sturridge

Growing up, Anna was sexually abused by her male cousins and eventually fled home, working first as a nurse’s aide and then as a prostitute, ultimately ending up as a patient in a hospital. Now in her early twenties, desperate to put the past behind her and start a new life, she seeks out her hard-drinking, seafaring father, whom she meets in a bar owned by “Johnny-the-Priest” (Timothy Hughes) in the first scene.

Tom Sturridge

In the second scene, Chris brings Anna to his barge, where he tells her stories of his family history, featuring generations of seamen. Mesmerized, Anna falls in love with the sea. “I feel like I’m living a long time out here in the fog, like I’ve been here before,” she tells her father. “This is the right place for me to fit in… I feel clean.” Suddenly, a man emerges from the water, climbing onto the barge—a survivor of a shipwreck. Called Mat Burke (Tom Sturridge), the Irish-born seaman immediately falls in love with Anna. “I thought you were a mermaid come to tempt me,” he says, entranced, and begins to speak of marrying her.

Brian d’Arcy James

In the third scene, a violent confrontation erupts between Mat and Chris. The latter doesn’t want his daughter to marry a seaman, insisting that she remain on land, away from that “old devil sea” that has cursed him and his family. Anna interrupts their conflict, determined that they both know the truth about her past. Shocked, Chris and Mat reject her. But in the fourth and final scene, the men return. Chris begs his daughter to forgive him for abandoning her as a child, and Mat forgives Anna for her past. The men have both enlisted to work on a ship leaving for Cape Town, South Africa, the next day; they promise to return to her, and she, in turn, promises to wait for them.

Timothy Hughes, Joe Carroll, Brian d’Arcy James

The thrill of this production lies in Kail’s expressionistic direction, which enhances the presence of that “dat ole davil sea” as an overpowering force of fate controlling the characters’ lives. In the pre-show, as the audience enters, an all-male ensemble moves and rearranges planks of wood onstage—first to form the floor of the bar where father and daughter meet, and then to form the barge for the final three scenes. (The ingenious scenography is by Christine Jones and Bret J. Banakis.) At every scene change, this male ensemble commands the stage and then remains lurking in the shadows surrounding the barge.

Brian d’Arcy James and Tom Sturridge

Most evocative is the fog, a haunting manifestation which surrounds the barge during the scene changes and often during the action. (Special effects are by Jeremy Chernick, underscored by Nicholas Britell’s original music.) The cumulative effect is mesmerizing, giving the story a timeless, surreal quality.

Tom Sturridge

Thematically, the threatening presence of the male ensemble represents the formidable obstacle that Anna faces throughout the play, until she climbs the highest stack of wooden platforms, declaring triumphantly: “No man can tell me what to do!”

Michelle Williams and Tom Sturridge

From the very first scene, Anna—with her shining golden hair—appears almost angelic among these threatening male figures. Played with intensity and clarity, Williams strengthens this unusual proto-feminist role with honesty and courage. (The only other female character is the crusty Marthy Owen, drinking companion to Chris, played colorfully by Mare Winningham, who—regrettably—appears only in the first scene.) As Chris, d’Arcy James, sporting a thick Swedish accent, ultimately wins our empathy through his true repentance as an absent father. Sturridge gives a powerful physical performance, writhing in pain from his wounds at first and then in agony over his passionate desire for Anna.

Brian d’Arcy James, Michelle Williams, Tom Sturridge

As for the play’s resolution, O’Neill was deeply offended by a critic who described it as a “tragedy with a happy ending.” The playwright insisted otherwise: “I wanted to have the audience leave with a deep feeling of life flowing on, of the past which is never the past but always the birth of the future.” Did he succeed? It’s yours to judge.

Michelle Williams

Suffice it to say, Thomas Kail’s Anna Christie is a rare and moving dramatic experience at St. Ann’s Warehouse, reaffirming O’Neill’s towering place in the American theatre. Those familiar with O’Neill’s later plays—such as Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh—will recognize the themes of fate and alcoholism, along with the symbols of fog and sea, and appreciate their origins in this early dramatic treasure.

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photos by Julieta Cervantes

Anna Christie
St. Ann’s Warehouse, 45 Water St in Brooklyn
(on the waterfront in Brooklyn Bridge Park)
ends on February 1, 2026
for tickets, visit St. Anne’s Warehouse

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