Listen to the tale of Cornelius Melody and tell me if it isn't vintage Eugene O'Neill. Byronic in looks and poetic sensibility, the formerly decorated Irish major at the centre of the infrequently staged A Touch of the Poet is also an acerbically concocted case study of faded glory and delusions of grandeur.

He fought Napoleon's army at the Battle of Talavera in 1809, but, as we meet him on a fateful summer day in 1828, he's the impoverished landlord of a shabby tavern just outside Boston. Much, socially and economically, has changed for this Irish immigrant. Little of it, however, has affected his haughty outlook on life or his condescending treatment of his doting wife Nora and angry daughter Sara -- both of whom he treats more like servants than family members.

Whether he's re-enacting scenes from Talavera, using cutlery and glasses for illustration, or dressing up in his bright-red major uniform to seduce ladies, his class and status anxieties are tragically and comically dramatized. You can practically hear O'Neill's alternately admiring, writhing in pain and laughing at his creation who, not unlike James Tyrone in A Long Day's Journey Into Night, is yet another thinly disguised portrait of his egomaniacal actor father, James O'Neill.

Cornelius, a performer by nature if not profession, is indeed a dream role for any actor of what the industry calls "a certain age." In the current Roundabout Theatre production, which opened Thursday at Studio 54 in New York under Doug Hughes's direction, the role is given a definitive treatment by Irish stage and screen actor Gabriel Byrne, a man with a faded matinee-idol look chiselled on his face.

Having starred in the last Broadway revival of O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten in 2000, Byrne is no stranger to the work of the greatest American playwright of the last century, but his performance here has more than a touch of the romantic poet about it. There's an aching pain, some foolish pride, a devilish humour, and an animal sexuality that lends Cornelius's identification with Lord Byron resonance and tragic power.

As directed by Hughes, against Santo Loquasto's fluid recreation of a period tavern, Cornelius is a master of an ever-dwindling domain. He's meant to tower above all those who enter his world, willingly or otherwise. As such, the less-than-capable supporting cast, with their various versions of "stage Irish," tips the production slightly to one side but doesn't derail it entirely. Hughes's direction could use some tightening up in those scenes to lessen their dull impact. Everybody seems to be playing catch-up to Byrne, and warming up slowly to the enormous historical and political details of early 19th-century America -- a revolutionary era of democratic advances -- with which O'Neill has saddled them.

Therefore, as Sara, the only person who stands up to Cornelius, the passionate and intellectually fierce performance that Emily Bergl delivers becomes more vital than ever. With her in charge, A Touch of the Poet is about much more than one man's fight to stop the world from turning, but becomes O'Neill's most devastating examination of a father-daughter relationship -- complete with mutual resentment, distrust and unconditional love. It's a tough, almost anachronistically modern, dynamic to pull off in this complicated, rich play, but both Bergl and Byrne manage it with sobering heartbreak and beauty.

To watch them spar verbally and mercilessly for more than two hours is the most gratifying family entertainment you're likely to see at this festive time of year or any other.

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