In 1932, Eugene O’Neill, who was already famous for his serious, searing dramas, wrote a light-hearted play, “Ah, Wilderness!” that is currently being given an impeccable production at Arena Stage.

The story of a tightly knit family on a typical Fourth of July in 1906 at their Connecticut home, “Ah, Wilderness” begins in nineteenth-century melodramatic mode, with all the older members of the Miller family condemning the seventeen-year-old son, Richard (William Patrick Riley) for his interest in new, “radical” writers like Oscar Wilde, Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.