By BROOKS ATKINSON

Although “Anna Christie” is not the best of Eugene O’Neill’s plays, it is better than most of the plays that turn up on Broadway, and it outranks any of the new plays of this season.  Fortunately, it is also just right for a City Center season.  And the performance that opened at the Center last evening is a first-rate piece of work with Celeste Holm, Art Smith and Kevin McCarthy in fine fettle in the leading parts.

When Mr. O’Neill wrote “Anna Christie” in 1920 he was still under the pungent spell of the S.S. Glencairn mariners, and his sense of tragedy was not thoroughly formed.  There is something about the conclusion of “Anna Christie” that is not so thoroughly resolved as “Desire Under the Elms.”

But his nearness to the sea plays in 1920 made it possible for him to create tumultuous, elemental characters whose problems are unsophisticated and whose suffering is fierce.  The amiable, stupid barge-captain, the prostitute and the braggart stoker might be hackneyed characters in other hands, and the for-shrouded coal barge might be a casually romantic vessel. 

But Mr. O’Neill’s characters, who made such an impression on the theatre thirty-one years ago, are as honest as they are dramatic.  Ignorant and helpless, they are cursed with wrong-headed obsessions, and they batter their heads wildly against barriers they set up for themselves.

The ending of “Anna Christie” is a happy one, at least from the technical point of view.  But you know that for the rest of their lives Chris Christopherson, the ancient child of the sea; Anna, his daughter, and Mat, the stoker, will be stumbling through one stupid crisis after another, full of pain and protest, and always out of control.  Every scene and line in “Anna Christie” is packed with vitality, and saturated in the sea.

Under Michael Gordon’s alert and perceptive direction, the performance is as vital as the characters.  Miss Holm, always an able and intelligent actress, makes something candid and coherent out of the part of Anna.  Pauline Lord brought something uniquely uncertain and compassionate to the original performance, and she gave the whole of “Anna Christie” a depth that is lacking now.  But Miss Lord’s style was wholly personal.  Miss Holm’s attitude is more direct and more contemporary, but it makes for the tension in the play.

Mr. McCarthy’s wild, lunging, rattle-headed stoker has enormous range and force and puts a lot of fire into the performance.  As the aging barge-skipper, Art Smith has created a fascinating and logical character who is all humanity in his sentimentality, his confusion and his weaknesses.  As the skipper’s current woman, Grace Valentine gives a comic performance that translates a minor character into something both valid and delightful.

As further evidence of the City Center’s growing mastery of its job, pay a little attention to Emeline Roche’s terse but inviting settings that translate frowzy material into dramatic designs.  “Anna Christie” is part of the American theater’s heritage.  It is good to have it recognized now in an invigorating performance.