Ah Wilderness

We're on to day three of the RUSC old-time-radio parade, in which Joy and I will be featuring a show every day on RUSC in the run up to one of the most important days in the history of America, our day of Independence.

Ah Wilderness is a Pulitzer Prize story by a great American dramatist, Eugene O'Neill, and is a comedy of American family life and the confusions of youth, its heroics and heartbreaks. 

The American playwright presented his comedy to Guild Theater audiences on Broadway in 1933 and it was only a few short years later that the radio adaptation was aired to audiences across America and the world.

The story takes you back to turn-of-the-century America on Independence Day.

Set in 'the good old days'  this is a gentle comedy telling the story of Richard Miller who is at that age where a boy becomes a man and as a result sees life through rather comically romanticized eyes. 

I wonder, as I listen to Ah Wilderness just how much of this young man's life mirrors my own years of development. I certainly heard many of my own family's voices around the Miller breakfast table.

As I listened to this charming and truly timeless comedy I came to an easy conclusion that although times have changed, family dynamics are the same as they ever were. 

Moms these days may be more concerned with their sons listening to rap than reading poetry by Algernon Charles Swinburne, but the concerns, the arguments and the outcomes are amusingly unaltered by time.

As the story unfolds the young Richard learns those important life-lessons that you can't get from books and so it seems, do those around him.

In a time of technology and computers, we can often think that times like these are long-lost, but this is one radio show that proves that almost nothing has changed... thankfully!

You can listen to any of the three versions of 'Ah Wilderness' available on RUSC, from the Campbell Playhouse, Theater Guild on the Air, and Ford Theater.

Happy listening my friends,