Eugene O'Neill Archives

Two Early Plays by Eugene O’Neill – One Really Works, One Not So Much

06/10/2016

Four time Pulitzer Prize winner, Eugene O’Neill, wrote 26 short plays and 20 full-length pieces. His iconic Long Day’s Journey Into Night, shortlisted as one of the most important plays of the 20^th century, is on Broadway as I write. With Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, O’Neill is said to have introduced dramatic realism into American Theater.

The playwright, raised in a touring theater family, held a wide variety of itinerant jobs before he became an author. He was a depressive, an alcoholic, suffered from tuberculosis, and attempted suicide. It’s therefore something of a revelation to watch the second and better of these two plays, Now I Ask You (1916), which sounds for all the world like it might have been written by George Bernard Shaw.

Terrell Wheeler and Emily Bennett

In this satire – yes, O’Neill wrote satire! – Lucy Ashleigh (Emily Bennett) is a pampered, upper class, young woman who immerses herself in every ideological, artistic, Bohemian philosophy that comes along with the swooning fervor of Sarah Bernhardt in high dudgeon. The night before her wedding to straight arrow Tom Drayton (Terrell Wheeler), she calls off the ceremony. Marriage, she declares, is “the meanest form of slavery.” Only free love will allow Lucy’s spirit to expand and blossom.

Her conservative father, Richard Ashleigh (David Murray Jaffe), is apoplectic; her fiancé understandably distressed. Wise and wily mother Mary (Kim Yancey-Moore), however, takes this latest obsession in stride and manages to turn the situation around by convincing Lucy to “sacrifice herself” so that Tom won’t face snubs, to marry him but with their own secret, independence-based contract. Taking Tom aside she suggests he neither discourage nor obviously tolerate Lucy, but let her grow out of each new fad in its own time. He agrees.

Kim Yancey-Moore and Emily Bennett

Lucy’s contract sounds contemporary and fair, though it includes foregoing children in order to help those less fortunate and both partners’ being able to take additional lovers. Tom bites his tongue assuming things will change. They marry. We next meet in the Drayton home three weeks later. (Mama is visiting.) The new bride, at first enthusiastic, is bored with the country “… sigh… Nature is making a vulgar display of sun…”

Into her restless orbit comes flamboyant, romantic poet Gabriel Adams (Eric R. Williams) who’s living with her friend, free thinking painter, Leonora Barnes (Dylan Brown). Think Bloomsbury Group to picture both. Gabriel is everywhere Tom turns. What can a loving husband do not to throw oil on the fire? Lucy’s mother has a plan…which almost, but not quite backfires. The well acted and directed play is full of innuendo and wit.

Dylan Brown and Eric R. Williams

Of special note: Emily Bennett’s Lucy poses like an Edward Gorey character in pastels. Her obtuse, self serving behavior remains innocent in the actress’s capable hands. We believe she believes. It’s difficult to walk this line without slipping into parody. Bennett is skilled and appealing. Here, a palpably light spirit.

Kim Yancy-Moore (Mary Ashleigh) is a pleasure to watch observing and subtly reacting to what goes on around her. She lets us see her character think; laughs credibly, speaks with measured consideration, and moves with good breeding. The actress is fully present even when silent. Her comic timing is pristine.

Eric R. Williams (Gabriel Adams) creates the kind of egotistical artist who perpetually gets away with things by attractive pandering. “I’m used to suffering, but you, you must not disturb your fine, inner spiritual nature!” Williams’ slow broadening of Adams’ increasingly apparent playacting works well.

Terrell Wheeler (Tom Drayton) has the ballast role here. The actor seems sincere and authentic without seeming too cliché. When he finally has the opportunity to display humor, he proves himself able.

With a three sided audience, Direction might be a challenge, but Alex Roe keeps his cast logically moving to give everyone ample view while always serving the play. Multiple entrance and exit options are used to great advantage. Characters who are meant to overplay do so with finesse, only a couple less consistently than the others. The act/react ratio couldn’t be better. Physical acting is as specific as costuming.

Kelly King and Erin Beirnard

The evening’s first play, Recklessness (1913) teeters at the brink of melodrama: Mildred Baldwin (Erin Beirnard), much younger wife of wealthy, traveling businessman Arthur (Kelly King) has an affair and falls in love with her chauffer, Fred (Jeremy Russial) while her husband’s away. Housemaid Gene (Eden Epstein), who was thrown over for Mildred, stalks the couple and reveals their secret to her employer. Horrible consequences are engineered as if by Machiavelli (or Rod Serling).

The only actor on the stage who fully holds his own is Kelly King who presents pompous, upper crust Arthur with imperious ease and fury. Only a moment of physical violence he shares with Epstein reads false. (Fight Choreography- John Long)

Kelly King and Eden Epstein

Eden Epstein begins well but falters as if unsure of Gene’s feelings when confronting Mr. Baldwin.

Minimal Sets also by Alex Roe are period accurate, utilitarian and sufficiently evocative. The appearance of a stairway is a surprise. Doors and windows are cleverly mobilized.

Sidney Fortner’s Costume Design is as good as anything one sees with considerably larger budgets. Every look not only suits, but is beautifully tailored. Bohemian characters are particularly well imagined as is a simply splendid negligee. Only Leonora’s black shoes with a white dress are – wrong.

This company is new to me and one clearly worth awareness.

Photos by Svetlana Didorenko
Opening: Terrell Wheeler, Kim Yancey-Moore, Dylan Brown

Metropolitan Playhouse presents
O’Neill (Unexpected): Two Early Plays by Eugene O’Neill:
Recklessness (1913) and Now I Ask You (1916)
Metropolitan Playhouse
220 East 4^th Street
Through June 26, 2016

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Long Day’s Journey Into Night – A Glass Mountain of A Play

05/05/2016

Long Day’s Journey is an exhausting theatrical experience. Not just for its length (three and three-quarter hours which, in this incarnation, represent the single, eruptive day), but because we’re inextricably drawn into the Tyrone’s almost unremittingly angry, guilt ridden, depressive, wounding, alcohol and morphine riddled world. That O’Neill manages to portray an undercurrent of deep love and inject unexpected humor is a testament to his mastery of the medium; literary quotes are immensely apt. The show is a glass mountain for both actors and the director, its scaling always something of a miracle.

James and Mary O’Neill, Eugene’s parents

Semi-autobiographical, the play must have be an exorcism for its author. Though completed in the early 1940s, he sealed the work in a Random House vault with stipulation it not be opened till 25 years after his death. Third wife Carlotta Monterey disinterred the play and offered its publication to benefit Yale University.

John Gallagher, Jr. and Jessica Lange

Parallels to O’Neill’s life include the summer cottage, its location, and the Irish American family it concerns. Characters are the ages they would have been in 1912. The playwright’s father, James O’Neill, was, in fact, an actor who played with Edwin Booth and was criticized for riding the wave of commercial success repeating his role as The Count of Mont Cristo for years. His mother, Mary, did attend a Midwest Catholic school. Eugene, like Edmund here, spent time at sea, wrote for a newspaper, stayed in a sanatorium for tuberculosis and suffered from depression and alcoholism his entire life. Jamie, who keeps his brother’s name in the play, died of alcoholism before it was written.

John Gallagher, Jr. and Michael Shannon

Tom Pye’s spare, evocative Set (emphasis on the stairs and the porch are particularly effective), Natasha Katz’s haunting Lighting Design, and Clive Goodwin’s evocative Sound Design create a ghostly, expectant atmosphere before we hear a word. Cosymes by Jane Greenwood fit each character like a glove.

Gabriel Bryne manifests James Tyrone’s volatility, stubbornness, ego, and monstrous love with grave and surety. That which is kingly makes it easy to imagine James on stage. Bryne’s natural accent and Irish roots add color and, one can’t help but conjecture, pith.

Michael Shannon (Jamie) solidly delivers, but could use a touch of familial poetry in inflection and gesture to feel more a Tyrone. His drunk scene, however, is a gorgeous model of plastered restraint and darkly comic physical acting.

John Gallagher Jr. (Edmund) sustains less truth than his fellows. The actor does bring painful impatience and vulnerability to the role.

Jessica Lange

Let us now praise Jessica Lange who has here written the dictionary on various forms of nuanced, nervous laughter, fluttering hands, darting eyes, and erratic vocal change. The actress embodies power, desperation, and fragility with equal conviction as mother, wife, and tender young woman. Perhaps not since her role as Frances Farmer in the 1982 biopic has Lange has the opportunity to theatrically go mad.

Because Mary has begun shooting up again the night before we meet, Lange must come on stage as if she was high. This robs us of watching her “get there,” a journey which might make the character’s tensile presence more acceptable. (We are privy to further sinking and, finally, drowning.)

It’s palpably stressful to spend so much time with a woman who’s rarely clearheaded and often mentally elsewhere. There’s a colossal amount of technique on this stage. The line between it and inhabiting Mary Tyrone is fine and sometimes crossed. How much is a matter of opinion. A muscular portrayal.

As Irish maid, Kathleen, Colby Minifie is utterly charming and credible.

Jessica Lange and Gabriel Byrne

Director Jonathan Kent does a superb job of organically utilizing the space. That which is glimpsed through windows works wonderfully, especially a moment Jamie comes up the front steps to stage level. (We don’t see the steps.) Another jewel-like moment is James’s turning away to reach into his pocket and give Edmund money so his son doesn’t see what he has.

Despite its characters’ pontificating, inebriated/high states, much of this play has the Tyrone family staring at each other or brooding in a corner. There’s also a great deal of anxious, aimless walking and hapless gesturing. Kent successfully holds tension and guides focus during these evocative parentheses.

Plan to drink directly after curtain.

Photos by Joan Marcus
Opening: Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Lange

Roundabout Theatre Company presents
Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill
Directed by Jonathan Kent
American Airlines Theater
227 West 42^nd Street
Through June 26, 2016

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