Long Day’s Journey into Night – 5/5
O’Neill wrote this play about 15 years before he died in 1953. It wasn’t published and produced until after he died, and it’s considered by many to be his masterpiece. That rings more or less true mostly because of the close ties to his own experiences, and for me, the way that the play feels more grounded than some of his other plays. He cast several of his plays against a framework of Greek tragedy, which like Greek tragedy, adds a kind of structured, if not stilted formalism to them.
This play is also semi-autobiographical, of Eugene O’Neill’s younger life. I imagine a play about his adult life could be really interesting too. I wonder about how he took his 18 year old daughter Oona marrying Charlie Chaplin, when he was 55, but alas.
The play more or less functions like an Aristotelian tragedy, but in four acts. It all takes place within a single day in the house of a famous acting family. The father is a famous actor who spends much of the play lamenting his choice to become typecast, having played the same (unnamed) role for decades, as opposed to the more varied career he dreamed about when he was younger. He spends a lot of time in his mind in his youth, especially when he was given a compliment by Edwin Booth, the premier American actor of the 19th century.
The mother is an Irish immigrant who spends a lot of time telling her sons about her father, whom she venerates. We also learn closer to bedtime that she’s addicted to morphine. We begin losing her halfway through the play as she begins to repeat herself over and over and make less and less sense. It’s clear that while this day is a little extraordinary for its events, her behavior is not.
One son has just learned for certain what he long suspected, that his persistent cough is, in fact, tuberculosis. He meant to tell his mother today, but doesn’t have the heart. He’s also decided to have a “drink” with his father, a symbolic act that of course will lead to a confrontation.
The last brother, much older than the other son is well on his way of becoming exactly like his father and grandfather, alcoholic. He’s reeling about the news of his brother’s health and spends a lot of the play “out”.
The play centers around getting the courage to tell the mother about his illness, and hoping she’s in a state to hear it, and confronting the father. And like all family stories, it’s about having the same day over and over again.
The Iceman Cometh – 4/5
The play takes place in a bar mostly, and it’s a quite long play. It’s bar full of drunks. I say that in the sense of the archetype of the drunk, before there was a way to discuss and talk about sobriety (unless someone figured it out on their own). The play is purposely slow burn in the opening scenes as we kind of learn a little about the different men and women in the bar (the women are almost all sex workers) but the spirit rises greatly when Hickey Hickman walks through the door. Hickey is a travelling salesman who visits the bar a few times a year when he’s in town, and always raises the spirits of the people there. He’s bright and energetic. He doesn’t drink. Instead, he tells them stories about himself, his life, and the road. Generally this leads to more energy for the next few days, but with no real way out, they fall right back into old habits. This of course raises the question of whether or not Hickey is doing anyone any favors or not. That question of course gets addressed headlong in the final act. The play otherwise cycles around the small lives in the bar and looks at them a little more closely for awhile.
Desire Under the Elms – 4/5
I read this when I was in high school and of course I had no real experience for the literal story happening, and no awareness of the frame story either. The play takes place on a farm in the 1850s. Three brothers gather and discuss the more or less recent death of their mother (well, step-mother for two), their father’s going off to find a new wife, women in general, and the future. Eben is younger than his half-brothers, and since it wasn’t their mother who died and they’ve seen their father go off and get remarried, they’re pretty cynical about the whole thing. Eben gets around to his point in talking to them. He wants to buy them out of their claim on the farm and offers them a cash settlement. After thinking about it for about a second, they take the money, sign the papers, and leave for the rest of the play. They’re still presences later on, but never show up again.
When the father returns, it’s impossible not to notice that his new wife is older than Eben, but not by that much. She’s also a firebrand and gorgeous. Early on they bicker and are hateful to one another, and Abbie even tells her husband that she wants to disinherit Eben by having a baby. But that’s a mask that leads them to eventually coming together (so to speak). Well, they fall in love, or are convinced of it, and event Abbie becomes pregnant. Eben’s father Ephraim thinks the baby is his, but no one else on the farm does. This leads to several confrontations.
When I said I didn’t get the frame of the story, well, that’s because I know Greek myths, but always thought they were just cool stories as a kid. The story is built off the story of Theseus, Hippolytus, and Phaedra, and well the story is mostly the same as that one. I didn’t know what story meant. Anyway, here’s a song based off that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb-SVPJM4L4&ab_channel=Hubertblues
Mourning Becomes Electra – 4/5
Another long play, and another play built off of Greek drama. One of O’Neill’s ideas as a playwright was to revisit ancient plays and more “serious plays” of Europe and show American audiences what was possible. This is both noble and a little silly as of course ancient plays aren’t always so serious and neither are European plays. But he’s right that Greek dramas and other ancient work are built off the same humanity that every other piece of literature is. Human life changes in technical ways and gets better in all kinds of ways and worse in all kinds of ways, but the basic core never really changes all that much.
Anyway, this play takes place in the 1860s, Union general Ezra Mannon is returning from war. His family is excited but tensions arise when a friend of his daughter tells her that it’s possible, if not likely that her fiance is actually the illegitimate son of her uncle and that this will come out when her father sees the man. This leads to a lot happening, but mostly, it’s important to know that this play is based off the Orestaia with General Mannon as Agamemnon, and the daughter Lavinia and her friend on Orestes and Electra, so you can guess where we go from here.