A Touch of the Poet

“For me, A Touch of the Poet has the advantage of being a great play that is relatively unknown. It has not been played in New York in 27 years,” director Doug Hughes says of the exciting challenge of working on a new production of the Eugene O'Neill classic play.

A Touch of the Poet is set in a rundown tavern in 1828 and focuses on the relationships between tavern owner Cornelius Melody, his wife Nora and their daughter Sara. Melody is an Irishman who desperately holds on to the idea that he is a European gentleman despite his sad financial state in the New World.

Did we mention that Cornelius Melody is played by Gabriel Byrne, the deliciously dark and handsome Irish actor? Byrne, whose last Broadway outing was in a revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten in 2000, obviously feels a kinship with the playwright's works. An ensemble of stage regulars, including Emily Bergl, Dearbhla Molloy, Byron Jennings, Ciaran O'Reilly and Kathryn Meisle, backs him.

“The experience of meeting Gabriel was the wholly exhilarating one of sitting down with someone I had long admired and realizing that we shared a great enthusiasm for this enterprise,” Hughes says. “We both went on about the great themes of the play--leave-taking, exile, the unspeakable complexity of family life, the human need for self-deception, the horrible hidden injuries that anxiety about status and class inflict on people. These are universal themes, of course. For our own purposes, I think Gabriel and I might classify them as ‘Irish' themes. It's a thunderously Irish play.”

This one might even shake the glitter out of the ghosts of Studio 54.

A TOUCH OF THE POET WHERE: Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street WHEN: Starts November 11, opens December 8