Ford Theater - Ah Wilderness

American playwright Eugene O'Neill presented his comedy "Ah Wilderness" 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.

Set in 'the good old days' of 1906 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. Mom these days may be more concerned with her son listening to rap than his 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 computers and rockets we can think that times like these are long-lost, but this is one radio show that proves that almost nothing has changed... thankfully.

Happy listening my friends,