2. RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

 

Black, Cheryl.  “Ida Rauh: Power Player at Provincetown.”  Journal of American Drama and Theatre, 6:2-3 (Spring/Fall 1994): 63-80.  [Traces and explains Rauh's rise and subsequent fall in the power structure of the Provincetown Players between 1915 and 1921.  Loyal to Jig Cook's vision and goals, she had run-ins with O'Neill and James Light during and after Cook's sabbatical leave in 1919-1920; and her directing of Where the Cross Is Made (1919, which she also acted in) evidently led to a protracted feud with O'Neill, exacerbated by his adamant refusal to delete the ghosts.  During the Players' New York seasons, the “Duse of Macdougal Street” also directed The Dreamy Kid and acted in The Sniper and The Long Voyage Home. —Ed.]

 

Bremer, J. M.  “De weerklank van Electra's schreeuw.”  Lampas: Tijdschrift voor nederlandse classici 26:1 (1993): 49-72.  [Treatments of Electra by R. Strauss, S. Plath, J. C. Oates, H. von Hofmannsthal, J. Giraudoux, J.-P. Sartre and M. Yourcenar.]

 

Colakis, Marianthe.  “Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones as Senecan Tragedy.”  Classical and Modern Literature (#2, 1990), 153-159.  [While O'Neill's debt to classical Greek drama is ubiquitously acknowledged and annotated, Colakis makes a strong case for Seneca's plays as, if not influences, certainly analogues.  “While there is no proof from any of O'Neill's writings that he intended to write a twentieth-century Senecan tragedy, the structure, the ideology, and the mood of his 1920 play ... are remarkably similar to those of Seneca's plays” (153).  E.g., the three-part plot characteristic of Seneca—“The Cloud of Evil, The Defeat of Reason by Passion, and finally—the longest movement—The Explosion of Evil” (153)—is the same in Jones.  Interestingly, there are particularly notable parallels between the protagonists of The Emperor Jones and Seneca's Medea, and between their respective confidant(e)s, Smithers and Medea's Nurse! —Ed.]

 

Davis, Walter A.  “Get the Guests”: Psychoanalysis, Modern American Drama, and the Audience.  Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1994.  286 pp.  $45.00 cloth (ISBN 0-299-14150-0); $19.95 paper (ISBN 0-299-14154-3).  [According to the Chronicle of Higher Education (3 August 1994, p. A11), Davis describes “how dramas express the secrets and discontents of their audiences.”  Focuses on Iceman and Journey, along with Miller's Salesman, Williams's Streetcar and Albee's Woolf, and stresses, according to J. M. Ditsky (Choice, 32:5, Jan. 1995), how “critics—by providing comforting `meanings' for their readers—stand in the way of audiences' taking unto themselves, with attendant discomfort, the plays' processes of character harrowing....”  I.e., we, the spectator-readers, are “the guests”!]

 

Demastes, William W., ed.  American Playwrights, 1880-1945.  A Research and Production Sourcebook.  Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994.  504 pp.  $85.00 cloth.  ISBN 0-313-28638-8.  [O'Neill coverage by Margaret Loftus Ranald.]

 

Eisen, Kurt.  The Inner Strength of Opposites: O'Neill's Novelistic Drama and the Melodramatic Imagination.  Athens: U of Georgia P, 1994.  256 pp.  $40.00 cloth.  ISBN 0-8203-1595-8.  [Part appeared in the EOR previously.  To be reviewed in a future issue thereof.  In the interim, these words from the Chronicle of Higher Education (20 July 1994, p. A13): “Describes how the American playwright evokes and then subverts the unified self depicted in 19th-century melodramas; includes detailed analyses of The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night.”]

 

Fludernik, Monika.  “The Illusion of Truth of Eugene O'Neill's A Touch of the Poet: Dynamics and Reversals.”  Amerikastudien 36:3 (1991): 317-335.

 

Gonzales, José B.  “Homecoming: O'Neill's New London in Long Day's Journey Into Night.”  New England Quarterly 66:3 (September 1993): 450-457.

 

Jones, Sumie.  “Nire no Kokage no Ykub_.”  Eibungaku (Tokyo) 21 (March 1992): 66-80.

 

Maufort, Marc.  “O'Neill's `Passage to India': Spiritual Discovery of America in The Fountain.”  BELL (Belgian Essays on Language and Literature), 1993, pp. 61-67.  [A well-reasoned defense of the thematic relevance of The Fountain and the central position of the character who changes (Juan), with revealing analogues in Whitman (both “Passage to India” and “Prayer of Columbus”).  But the initial assertion of Fountain's stageworthiness is tenuous, at best. —Ed.]

 

Moorton, Richard F., Jr.  “Eugene O'Neill's American Eumenides.”  Classical and Modern Literature (#4, 1990), 359-372.  [While the connections between Mourning Becomes Electra and Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy have been discussed at length, Moorton challenges the general critical view “that in the third play of his adaptation ... O'Neill has abandoned Aeschylus altogether” (359).  He points out that both The Haunted and The Eumenides are plays of judgment (not to mention notable major structural parallels between the two), although “the Mannons are motivated by conscience more than honor” (370), O'Neill's play being “a tragedy of conscience,” unlike Aeschylus's “tragedy of honor” (371).]

 

Müller, Kurt.  Inszenierte Wirklichkeiten: die Erfahrung der Moderne im Leben und Werke Eugene O'Neills.  Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993.

 

Norén, Lars.  Excerpt from Give Us the Shadows, translated by Marita Lidholm Gochman and Len Gochman.  Artes International, 1 (1994): 114-122.  [A scene from Norén's play about the O'Neills in Marblehead in 1949.  The play was performed at Stockholm's Royal Dramatic Theater in 1991, and was subsequently seen for one summer performance at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Waterford, CT, with Max von Sydow recreating his portrayal of the troubled American dramatist. —Ed.]

 

Nugent, S. Georgia.  “Masking Becomes Electra: O'Neill, Freud, and the Feminine.”  In Drama and the Classical Heritage: Comparative and Critical Studies, ed. Clifford Davidson et al.  New York: AMS, 1993, pp. 254-272.

 

Pfister, Joel.  Staging Depth: Eugene O'Neill and the Politics of Psychological Discourse.  Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1995.  xxiv + 327 pp.  $45.00 cloth (ISBN 0-8078-2186-1), $17.95 paper (ISBN 0-8078-4496-9).  UCP catalog: “Pfister examines the history of the middle class family and of Freudian pop psychology in the 1910s and 1920s to reconstruct the cultural conditions for the imagining and popularizing of `depth,' a metaphor that was central to O'Neill's dramatic vision.”

 

Prachand, Leena.  “The Politics of Gender in Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings and Desire Under the Elms.”  Literature and Politics in Twentieth Century America, ed. J. L. Plakkoottam and P. K. Sinha.  Hyderabad: American Studies Research Center, 1993, pp. 79-85.

 

Redlon, Rebecca.  “`Significant Beauty': Eugene O'Neill's Portrayal of Women.”  Essays and Studies by Students of Simmons College, 1.2 (April 1993): 9-12.  [Sympathetic surveys of the lives of four O'Neill characters (Mrs. Keeney, Anna Christopherson, Abbie Putnam and Mary Tyrone) support Ms. Redlon's contention that O'Neill was “truly sensitive in his portrayal of female characters” and had genuine “concern for the deplorable state of women's lives”—lives abounding in silence, monotony, and both physical and “psychic imprisonment.”  Often, in fact, “O'Neill's women are the only truly likeable characters in his plays” (9).]

 

Rice, Joseph.  “The Blinding of Mannon House: O'Neill, Electra, and Oedipus.”  Text and Presentation: Journal of the Comparative Drama Conference 13 (1992): 45-51.

 

Ryback, Jeffrey W.  Eugene O'Neill: Dancing With the Devil.  A Play for One Person.  Studio City, CA: Players Press, 1990.  ISBN 0-88734-224-8.  [Text of a monodrama set in the Hell Hole in 1915, as O'Neill, awaiting the arrival of Terry Carlin “to visit him in eternity ... tells us the story of his life.”  The play ran for three weeks at the American Ensemble Company Theatre in New York City in 1987.]

 

Saur, Pamela S.  “Classifying Rural Dramas: O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms and Schönherr's Erde.”  Modern Austrian Literature 26:3-4 (1993): 101-114.

 

Smith, Madeline and Richard Eaton.  “O'Neill's `Suitable' Comments on Strange Interlude.”  W. Va. U. Philological Papers 38 (1992): 125-133.

 

Usui, Masami.  “Mary Tyrone's Drug Addiction and Quest for Truth in Long Day's Journey Into Night.”  Studies in Languages and Cultures 16 (1990): 109-122.

 

Vorlicky, Robert.  Act Like a Man: Challenging Masculinities in American Drama.  Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1994.  $44.50 cloth, $17.95 paper.  [O'Neill is included in Vorlicky's examination of “how dialogue reflects social codes of male behavior.”]

 

Wilmer, Steve.  “Censoring Eugene O'Neill.”  Gramma: Journal of Theory and Criticism 2 (1994): 199-211.  [Surveys official and public opposition to the original productions of All God's Chillun, Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude, and especially The Hairy Ape, “O'Neill's most polemical attack on American capitalist society” (202).  But even in Ape O'Neill remained as Nietzschean as Marxist, and the end of the I.W.W. scene “marks a shift in ideology from Marxist to humanist, from concern with the external class struggle to a preoccupation with the inner value of the individual” (205).]

 

 

3. O'NEILL DOUBLY REPRESENTED IN FUTURE VOLUME.  Marc Maufort is editing a collection of essays entitled Staging Difference: Cultural Pluralism in American Theatre and Drama, to be published by Peter Lang.  The third section therein, “The Canon of American Drama and Cultural Difference,” will include two essays on O'Neill: “O'Neill's First Transcultural Epic: Universal History in The Fountain,” by Ronald R. Miller; and “The Pathology of Resistance to Cultural Assimilation in O'Neill's Last Plays,” by Martha Bower.

 

 

4. O'NEILLIAN SCHOLAR RECEIVES AWARD.  Our congratulations to Edward L. Shaughnessy of Butler University in Indianapolis, who is well known in these pages (as in his book O'Neill in Ireland) for some of the most perceptive examinations yet of the members of O'Neill's immediate family.  Ed has received an Hibernian Research Award from the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism at the University of Notre Dame, to enable him to pursue and complete a book-length study of “Eugene O'Neill's Catholic sensibility.”  Bravo!

 

 

5. SHEAFFER VOLUME AVAILABLE TO ALL WHO ASK.  The passing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning O'Neill biographer Louis Sheaffer in August 1993 was noted in the last issue.  What we did not then know was that a bound memorial volume put together by family and friends was distributed at the memorial service.  It contains pictures, personal documents, letters, and a generous sampling of Mr. Sheaffer's theatre journalism.  And thanks to the generosity of a relative of Lou's with whom I corresponded, copies of the booklet are available to all who ask them.  While supplies last, of course.  Address inquiries to Michele Slung, 1808 Kilbourne Place N.W., Washington, DC 20010. —FCW.

 

 

6. DISSERTATIONS DEVOTED (IN FULL OR IN PART) TO O'NEILL.

 

Conklin, Robert Brian.  “The Performance of Folly in Plays by O'Neill, Williams and Shepard.”  Ohio State Univ.  Dissertation Abstracts Int'l 53:11 (May 1993): 3902A.

 

Dubost, Thierry.  “Man and the World in the Theatre of Eugene O'Neill.”  University of Paris IV Sorbonne, 1994.  “Part One is a study of the family, showing how man is trapped by space, heredity, time, and communal hierarchy.  All family relations (Father/Son, etc.) are analyzed, stressing the conflict between the fight or flight impulse, since the characters who try to assert themselves must break away from the fetters of the clan.  Part Two deals with man and society, its predefined frames (e.g., race, class) being a jail for the characters.  A sense of belonging becomes the goal in their pursuit of happiness, but they must wear masks to become members, and may lose their identity.  Belonging to a group, being one with another person, without renouncing one's personality is the challenge man has to face.  Few succeed; friends shown as the double of the character, or the androgyne for love, play an important part in the quest of the protagonists.  Some choose to dream, or to escape so as not to see their failure, while others seek renewal elsewhere.  In the study of inner worlds, man facing himself, one discovers a tension between the need to find oneself and a wish to escape.  The revelation of what one is, which implies admitting to one's faults, is a plea for forgiveness, and suicide becomes a means of redemption.  Ineluctable decline and eternal return are part of this world, but, still, man can be free.  He looks for spiritual guidance to see where he belongs.  Some adopt a Buddhist or Taoist creed, while others, Nietzsche-like, lose their battles, trying to be free, wishing to know who they are.  What matters is unity with a Whole, which leads to a pantheistic vision.  The dissertation tries to show that the vital concept in the plays of O'Neill is rebirth, of which refound oneness is the sign.” (T.D.)

 

Elliott, Thomas S.  “Eugene O'Neill: Art as Religious Quest.”  Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, 1994.  “The author views O'Neill's work as the synthesis of O'Neill's biography, his work, and his period.  Beginning with the proposition that O'Neill was a man of his time, as well as the product of his inherited past and a prophet of future directions in American drama, the author examines O'Neill's quest for a personal, loving God as that quest is expressed in O'Neill's biography, his use of the mask, his dramatic experiments with Expressionism, and his recurrent use of religious allusions and themes in his plays.  Elliott argues that O'Neill was part of a unique movement in the American arts, American Expressionism.  He also contends that religion plays a major role in O'Neill's plays and in his development as a playwright, and that O'Neill used the mask, a device traditionally associated with both drama and religion, to explore psychological, dramatic and religious themes in new ways.” (T.S.E.)

 

Frank, Glenda.  “Family Masks: Father-Child Relationships in the Plays of Eugene O'Neill.”  City Univ. of New York.  Dissertation Abstracts Int'l 53:10 (April 1993): 3412A.

 

Longhofer, Julie.  “Eugene O'Neill, Sam Shepard and the American Family.”  Dir., James Hurt.  Univ. of Illinois at Urbana, 1995.

 

Papa, Lee.  “From The Hairy Ape to Waiting for Lefty: Power, Gender, and Community in American Labor Drama.”  Dir., Franklin Hildy.  Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville, 1994.

 

 

7. RECENT AND FORTHCOMING O'NEILL PRODUCTIONS.

 

Ah, Wilderness!, dir. Robert Kelley.  TheatreWorks @ Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts, Palo Alto, CA, 20 July - 21 August 1994.

 

Ah, Wilderness!  Weathervane Theatre, Whitefield, NH.  In repertory, 10 August - 3 September 1994.

 

Before Breakfast, dir. Amy Coleman.  Common Basis Theatre Company, New York City, Fall 1994.  (Reviewed in this issue.)

 

The Hairy Ape, dir. Elizabeth LeCompte.  The Wooster Group, New York City, 1 January - 28 February 1995.

 

Long Day's Journey Into Night, dir. Diana Leblanc.  Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford (ONT) Festival, 25 May - 17 September 1994.  (Returning as part of the SF's 1995 season as well.  Reviewed in this issue.)  [Tel. (800) 567-1600 or (519) 273-1600.]

 

Long Day's Journey Into Night.  New Theater, Coral Gables, FL, 11 November - 11 December 1994.

 

Long Day's Journey Into Night, dir. Douglas Wager.  Arena Stage, Washington, DC, 6 January - 12 February 1995.  (Reviewed in this issue.)

 

Long Day's Journey Into Night, dir. Ed Baierlein.  Germinal Stage Denver (CO), 9 March - 9 April 1995.

 

A Moon for the Misbegotten, dir. Grey Johnson.  Gloucester (MA) Stage Company, 20 July - 14 August 1994.

 

A Moon for the Misbegotten, dir. Edward Morgan.  Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, 20 January - 12 February 1995.

 

A Moon for the Misbegotten, dir. Michael Bloom.  Berkeley (CA) Rep, 31 March - 19 May 1995.  [Tel. (510) 845-4700.]

 

More Stately Mansions, dir. Ivo van Houe.  Het Zuidelijk Toneel (Netherlands) at the Holland Festival, Amsterdam, 2-5 June 1994.

 

A Touch of the Poet, dir. Joe Dowling, with Daniel J. Travanti as Con Melody.  American Repertory Theatre, Cambridge, MA, 7-26 March 1994.  (Reviewed in this issue.)

 

A Touch of the Poet.  Roundabout Theatre Company, New York City, 29 March - 28 May 1995.  [Tel. (212) 719-9393.]

 

 

8. IN MEMORIAM.

 

Three outstanding portrayers of O'Neill characters have left the fold since our last gathering.  The first, Jessica Tandy, who played Mary Tyrone at the Stratford Festival, Ontario, in the summer of 1980, died on 11 September 1994 at the age of 85.  Reviewing her performance in the Winter 1980 issue of the Eugene O'Neill Newsletter (pp. 25-27), I noted how she “captured every nuance of Mary's complex personality.”

 

Less than a week later, on the 16th, a second quondam O'Neillian, Jack Dodson, followed Ms. Tandy, at the age of 63.  Televiewers may remember Mr. Dodson best as Howard Sprague on the “Andy Griffith Show.”  But to O'Neillians it was the role of Charlie, the night clerk in Hughie, on which he put his most indelible stamp, both on stage and on television.  Mr. Dodson performed the role, with Jason Robards the perfect partner as Erie Smith, innumerable times, both of them offering interpretations universally viewed as definitive. 

 

And, more recently, on 22 February 1995, at the age of 60, Ed Flanders passed away.  Mr. Flanders won three Emmy Awards during a distinguished television career: for his part in the series St. Elsewhere; for the title role in Harry S. Truman: Plain Speaking; and—most importantly hereabouts—for his performance as the feisty, manipulative, crusty but loving Phil Hogan in the TV adaptation of the Broadway sensation, A Moon for the Misbegotten, for which he had earlier won the Tony and Drama Desk awards.  Both performances, in 1974 and 1976 respectively, starred Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst (two more definitive readings!), but Mr. Flanders, perhaps even more than his Broadway successor Tom Clancy, held his own admirably. 

 

We offer a sad and loving farewell to three memorable illuminators of great O'Neill roles.