MICHAEL MANHEIM. VITAL CONTRADICTIONS: CHARACTERIZATION IN THE PLAYS OF IBSEN, STRINDBERG, CHEKHOV AND O’NEILL. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2002. 209 pp. ISBN 90-5201-991-6.

Michael Manheim’s new study of characterization displays some of the  very contradictory qualities he uncovers in many of the key plays in modern drama’s great tradition from Ibsen to O’Neill. At once an objective analysis and a personal, often self-referential glance backward at a lifetime of playgoing, teaching and scholarship, Manheim’s Vital Contradictions positions itself against various postmodern and deconstructionist theories of the “death of character.” Instead, he affirms how these playwrights reinvigorated the art of characterization in order to get beyond the plot-driven melodrama that dominated the nineteenth-century stage. Rather than being carried off by an ingenious plot, audiences had to confront characters whose motives and temperaments reflected their own experience of modern life as a contrary mix of forces both external and within.

In the pages of this journal it is tempting to describe this book as an etiology of O’Neill’s art, with Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov as the great pioneers who blazed the path that led ultimately to Long Day’s Journey and Moon for the Misbegotten. As Manheim acknowledges in a note to his discussion of Miss Julie, this book grew out of his 1989 essay, “Eugene O’Neill and the Founders of Modern Drama,” and even readers unaware of his major contributions to O’Neill studies over the past two decades could not fail to notice the persistent mentions of Jamie Tyrone in the early chapters and the thorough, up-to-date coverage of O’Neill scholarship (compared to the other three playwrights) in the notes and bibliography.

For all its sharp insights into such familiar plays as Peer Gynt, A Dream Play and The Cherry Orchard, this book may perhaps best be read as a kind of scholarly memoir, an intellectual autobiography disguised as a monograph. Readers expecting exciting new theories of dramatic character or revelations about the lives or methods of these four playwrights may be disappointed. What Manheim offers instead is a pointed return to a tradition that stresses not the construction of a theoretical framework so much as the presentation of a critical sensibility, the informed and sustained contemplation of the important if finally insoluble question of what it means to be human. If O’Neill figures here more than in other studies of drama since Ibsen, it reflects how powerfully this scholar has come to see theatre and the world generally in terms of the Tyrone family, the pipe dreams of Harry Hope’s saloon, and Josie Hogan’s maternal forgiveness.

That said, it would be quite inaccurate to suggest that Manheim pays just cursory homage to the early patriarchs to get more quickly to O’Neill. Each chapter is selective but substantial in its treatment of specific plays, and the longest chapter is devoted not to Ibsen or Strindberg (O’Neill’s most important influences) but to Chekhov, who, as Manheim points out, was a less important precursor for O’Neill personally. Manheim declares Chekhov modern drama’s greatest master, and offers a detailed analysis of The Three Sisters that goes well beyond any narrow purpose of explaining O’Neill’s origins. Still, his thesis that characters’ inward contradictions give modern drama its distinctive sense of life also leads Manheim to deem The Cherry Orchard a masterpiece but “the least of Chekhov’s four major plays for my purposes,” a judgment that suggests how a critic’s agenda can sometimes override the dramatist’s. As it pertains to Chekhov’s most haunting treatment of historical change, this judgment also reveals Manheim’s downplaying of historicist or cultural readings of drama, which he calls “ancillary” to discovering drama’s true purpose of exploring what is essentially and universally human.

Vital Contradictions thus frequently reads like a critical credo, foregrounding the act of choosing one’s critical methods—in this case a guardedly optimistic humanism. The choice of these four writers leaves a sense of arbitrary exclusion beyond the need to limit and focus any given study. It might have been instructive, for example, if Manheim had chosen to contrast O’Neill’s modernism with Brecht’s, given the latter’s very different approach to characterization; or if he had glanced ahead to dramatic characters of absurdist and postmodern drama with their very different kinds of subjectivity on stage. Among playwrights outside this foursome, he does mention Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire but only as a very good imitation of Miss Julie (and recalls mistakenly that Blanche, like Julie, kills herself at the end of the play).

Yet the inner strength of Vital Contradictions lies ultimately in its very subjectivity. Other approaches might not have allowed for Manheim’s almost confessional passage on first encountering Quintero’s Iceman as a young man in 1956, his personal epiphany on experiencing his own pipe dreams shaken while watching Hickey trying to liberate the saloon’s drunken inmates. “Against all logic,” Manheim admits, imbued at the time with faith in the saving power of Freudian psychology, “I fully expected the romantic conclusion: that each of the crew would go out and face his or her demons.” The simple candor of this passage has more force than many a brilliant textual explication, revealing the scholar working through his own contradictions.

Kurt Eisen
Tennessee Tech University

 

BRENDA MURPHY. O’NEILL: LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. xvii+250pp. ISBN 0-521-66575-2.

Theatre patrons and scholars who have seen the most recent revival of Long Day’s Journey Into Night at Broadway’s Plymouth Theatre can enrich their experience and place it into context by reading Brenda Murphy’s production history of O’Neill’s masterpiece. Eschewing literary and thematic analysis, this volume, part of a “Plays in Production” series from Cambridge U. Press, documents an impressive number of American and international stage productions ranging from the 1956 New York premiere to the 1994 Stratford (ONT) revival with William Hutt and Martha Henry. Even more impressively, the book chronicles film, video and television adaptations of the play and includes a complete videography for further research and viewing pleasure.

Previous volumes in this series include histories of A Doll’s House, Death of a Salesman (also by Murphy), Molière’s Don Juan, Wilde’s Salome, Mother Courage, A Streetcar Named Desire and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The series studies dramatic texts that a reader is likely to know and to have seen and shows how such texts have received different treatments in performance and how perceptions about them have changed in time according to shifts in cultural tastes and values. Each production, this critical approach implies, stresses different aspects of a rich text, and appreciation stems from the sheer number of viable interpretations that can be derived from a single script.

With respect to O’Neill’s play, Murphy attributes the variety of productions to two major factors: the musicality of the language, and the balance of importance among the four family members. These performance dynamics serve as a refreshing organizing principle throughout the entire book. The passage below establishes the structure of the works, but also provides key critical commentary, as well as useful advice for a would-be director:

One of the fundamental truths about Long Day’s Journey that emerges from production is that its dynamics of conflict, and thus its thematic import, is by no means fixed. There is truly no protagonist in this play “of old sorrow,” but four characters interacting in a form that is like a piece of classical music with a number of intricately interwoven motifs. When a director chooses to emphasize one character, particularly by cutting dialogue, or when one powerful performance is given among three that are merely adequate, the play becomes “about” something. This is to hear one motif, as it were, louder and perhaps more often than the others. It affects all of the motifs and their interaction with each other, so that, in this play where each of the Tyrones offers his (or her) own apologia for the past, the audience’s understanding of the whole is quite different from performance to performance. (53-54)

The emphasis upon sound allows Murphy to turn away from the content and concentrate upon the form of the play as she compares the musical approaches in vastly different productions, such as José Quintero’s landmark New York premiere in 1956 and the controversial Jonathan Miller production in 1986 starring Jack Lemmon, a production that greatly reduced the four-hours­plus running time by encouraging the actors to speak simultaneously and overlap dialogue. While Murphy points out that Quintero greatly disapproved of Miller’s work, and responded with another revival of his own in 1988, both productions addressed the musicality of the text. Similarly, Murphy points out that productions typically emphasize one character or performer over another (Jason Robards as Jamie, Grete Mosheim as Mary in Germany, Olivier as Tyrone in 1971, or Michael Moriarty as Edmund in Robards’ 1975 production) or one generation over another (parents versus children). Murphy concludes that the Stratford, Ontario production achieved success by attempting a non-judgmental version, in keeping with the spirit of the 90s, in which all the Tyrones were equally seen as both guilty and innocent.

Divided into four chapters, the 250-page volume devotes the first solely to the New York premiere in 1956. One of the very best parts of the book is Murphy’s untangling of the very difficult journey that O’Neill’s play took to actual production. She documents what is known about Carlotta Monterey’s dealings with producers, publishers and agents and her violation of O’Neill’s wish to withhold publication until twenty-five years after his death and never to have the play produced. The author does an excellent job of recording the facts in proper order and leading readers to make up their own minds about Carlotta’s motives.

She goes on to describe Quintero’s approach to the play as a director, and describes the rehearsal process and the work of all the designers and actors. She follows this same technique in the next two chapters, “Productions in English,” and “Productions in Translation,” though in less detail. After a while, it becomes difficult to differentiate one production from another. This is not to fault Murphy, but the project of performance criticism in general. Murphy obviously did not see many of the productions that she describes, and her analysis depends mainly upon critics’ reviews. It is sometimes very difficult to get a sense of what many of the productions were actually like. The final chapter, “Media Adaptations,” provides refreshing closure for the whole project, as Murphy relies mainly upon her own analysis of the videos, films and television performances of the play. Her account of Sidney Lumet’s 1962 film, detailing particularly the director’s use of separate lenses for each actor, will inspire many a reader to see that film again.

In addition to the aforementioned videography, the back of the book includes a comprehensive production chronology, a discography, and an extensive bibliography. Students and scholars, theatre professionals, and others interested in the theatrical process will very much welcome detailed performance analysis of a single drama. Murphy writes very well and very clearly. The softbound book is well produced and easy to read; the typeface is clear and printed on good paper; there are only a few typographical errors. A revised edition in the future will be able to erase those and embrace subsequent performances of O’Neill’s greatest play.

Zander Brietzke
Montclair, New Jersey

 

MADELINE C. SMITH AND RICHARD B. EATON. EUGENE O’NEILL: AN ANNOTATED INTERNATIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY, 1973 THROUGH 1999. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Publishers, 2001. vi+242pp. ISBN 0-7864-1036-1.

Eugene O’Neill is America’s greatest dramatist. His body of work is substantial, and many of his plays, particularly the late works, are among the masterworks of American dramatic literature and theatre. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is regarded by some critics as the finest play ever written by an American playwright.

Not only are his plays highly regarded in the United States; they are also held in high esteem in other countries. This is not surprising since O’Neill is appropriately credited with transforming our theatre from an imitative, derivative, secondary cultural rendering into an original, substantial and highly experimental mode of dramatic expression. He is one of the few American dramatists whose work continues to be extensively read and produced in the United States and abroad—popular with theatre specialists and the theatregoing public. Moreover, he is one of the few American playwrights who deservedly hold a position of parity with the great European dramatists as one of the giants of modern drama and arguably of world drama.

In light of such accomplishments and admirable reputation, it is understandable that his work has attracted and absorbed the attention of highly sophisticated students of dramatic literature. Many distinguished representatives from the areas of academic scholarship (interpreters, biographers, theorists and historians), formal and informal criticism, and journalistic commentary (analysts, critics and reviewers) have been drawn to the work of O’Neill. Barrett H. Clark, Travis Bogard, Edwin Engel, Sophus K. Winther, Doris V. Falk, Doris M. Alexander, Arthur and Barbara Gelb, Louis Sheaffer and a host of others have shed light on the work and oeuvre of O’Neill. The Gelbs continue to be active O’Neill delvers, and current contributors also include such scholars as Michael Manheim, Stephen Black, and an expanding group of younger, gifted O’Neill experts.

These interpreters of the O’Neill canon provide windows upon O’Neill’s life and work, including his poems and short stories; probable influences upon him; information about other members of his family, friends and acquaintances; and valuable production data. Through the efforts of all these commentators, the O’Neill reader, student, theatregoer, actor and producer have all become the more aware and knowledgeable.

Yet another source of awareness and knowledge derives from the work of another type of scholarly specialist, the bibliographer. That individual calls attention to the achievements of O’Neill and of colleagues, scholarly and critical, who have studied, produced and/or shared reflection upon O’Neill.

Of all those who have offered bibliographical aids since the inception of O’Neill’s career, Jordan Miller’s Eugene O’Neill and the American Critic, 2nd edition, provided and continues to provide a superb resource for contemporary and future scholars. The product of extensive research (careful compilation; intelligent organization; and clear, appropriate and succinct annotations), the work (conceived in 1954, published in 1962, and revised in 1973) has proved extraordinarily valuable to scholars who have drawn from and continue to rely upon its voluminous information and extensive entries. As long as interest in O’Neill exists, and that interest is steadily growing, Professor Miller’s groundbreaking volume will continue to be of value.

Recently, another ambitious bibliography has been put forth: Eugene O’Neill: An Annotated International Bibliography, 1973 through 1999, by Madeline Smith and Richard Eaton. The scholarly duo diligently dedicated themselves to this project for a period of three years. They opened themselves to a significantly broader range of categories and concomitant entries than did Professor Miller—but have wisely maintained the general organizational guidelines suggested by his study. In addition, they have approached and conducted their project in a manner that is indisputably original: an originality which lies in the breadth and variety of the inclusions in the entire text.

In format, the book is organized as follows: Periodical Publications (English); Book and Parts of Books (English); Dissertations (English); Scholarship and Criticism (Foreign Language); Productions (English) Productions (Foreign Language); Primary Works Including Translations; and Miscellaneous Items. This is followed by an Index of Authors; an Index of Plays; and an Index of Subjects.

Each section is arranged alphabetically, making it very easy to locate entries. The annotations are substantive, yet sufficiently brief for one to quickly capture the essence of the work under consideration. Such breadth and brevity make it convenient for the scholar to decide if he or she would benefit from an encounter with the entire text. Also, having so many works covered so succinctly avails the reader of a pleasant, time-saving overview of each of the categories.

The annotations are apt and succinct and often introduce relevant quotations from the works listed under the separate categories. In some instances, the entries contain helpful evaluative comments. Moreover, when appropriate, there is, in addition to the focused commentary and germane quotations, ample cross-referencing. It is perhaps unorthodox to apply the term “sensitivity” to the preparation of a bibliography, but that is precisely the word that applies in this case. It is as if Smith and Eaton were able to intuit their readers’ needs, to empathize with potential users of the book—to foresee and provide the needed information that a delver might require.

It is obvious that the Smith/Eaton bibliography is a wonderful new resource. Because it is so valuable, there is little danger that the exposition of a few shortcomings will diminish scholars’ respect for and appreciation of it work. In fact, the ability to criticize grows out of the virtues of the book itself. Because its aim is so ambitious, because the concomitant and resultant expectations are so high, because such painstaking work obviously went into preparing it, readers may, ironically, be led to expect more than even this fine work can deliver.

In effect, the admirable attempt by Smith and Eaton to enlarge the bibliographic umbrella to include so many new kinds and new pieces of information (foreign scholarship and a plethora of foreign and domestic professional and non-professional production data) has resulted in a few omissions. As the authors themselves explain, in the introduction to the work, for example, they have been less than totally successful in obtaining worthwhile comprehensive information about community, summer stock, and college productions of O’Neill’s oeuvre. This information is important because some recent non­professional productions of O’Neill’s works have arguably been among the best. Obviously, reviews of such productions, including excerpts and memorable insights from reviews and related production data, are absent from the book.

Given the orientation of this work, one might also delicately suggest that an additional category might have served its purposes to advantage. It would have been helpful if the book had listed, obviously without annotation, books, articles, theses and productions in prospect. Such a listing would have served to alert O’Neill students to what lies “Beyond the Horizon” and to constitute a transition to future scholarly work and offerings. To include this suggestion in a discussion of the book’s shortcomings is, admittedly, questionable. Such an addition is at odds with conventional bibliographic tradition and might well require the expenditure of too much time and exist beyond the reasonable expectation for a bibliographical work. This notion is not altogether foolhardy, however. So broad, so inclusive, in effect so panoramic a perspective underlies the presentation of the Smith/Eaton bibliography that such an addition might accord well with the spirit of openness that informs their scholarship and enhance the usefulness of their book.

On a minor note, one additional observation might be tentatively made. The editing and proofreading of the book were obviously done meticulously; but one might still quibble with a few of the punctuation and diction decisions that emerge at times from a the reading of the text. Also, it might have been valuable to have included a brief chronology of O’Neill’s life and work.

Whereas some academicians might assert, and perhaps justifiably, that a scholarly/critical or biographical work is more deserving of respect than a bibliographical one, at its best an annotated bibliography is itself a work of interpretation requiring many scholarly/critical and, perhaps, biographical judgments. At least it is, when executed properly, an invaluable tool for the scholar, critic and biographer. With all of these, it constitutes a kind of collaboration, and, philosophically regarded, any completed work of scholarship is a mutual effort, owing much to the bibliographer.

Faced, then, with the task of appraising the newest and most ambitious bibliography on O’Neill, it is important to state that this book is worthy of respect for both its aims and its accomplishments. It is not the revolutionary, exploratory product offered by Jordan Miller because he was the first—he cleared the land and opened the territory. In fact, without his pioneering effort, it is questionable whether Smith and Eaton could have achieved the fine work that they have produced.