Eugene O’Neill and
20th Century Drama
Script Analysis
TH 325
An international drama
During the 20th century (especially after World
War I) Western drama became more unified and
less the product of separate national literary
traditions. Realism, naturalism, and symbolism
(and various combinations of these) continued
to inform important plays.
Experiments
For most of 20th- century theatre,
realism was the mainstream. There
were some, however, who turned their
backs on realism. Realism originally
began as an experiment to make
theatre more useful to society—a
reaction against melodrama, highly
romanticized plays—and realism has
become the dominant form of theatre
in the 20th-century. There have been
some experiments, though, which have
allowed for more adventurous
innovation in mainstream theatre.
Early 20th century naturalism
Among the many 20th-century playwrights who wrote what
can be broadly termed naturalist dramas were Gerhart
Hauptmann (German), John Galsworthy (English), John
Millington Synge and Sean O'Casey (Irish), and Eugene
O'Neill, Clifford Odets, and Lillian Hellman (American).
Eugene O’Neill
Lillian Hellman
Clifford Odets
International influences
Three vital figures of 20th-century drama are
the American Eugene O'Neill, the German
Bertolt Brecht, and the Italian Luigi Pirandello.
Eugene O’Neill
Three vital figures of 20th-century
drama are the American Eugene
O'Neill, the German Bertolt Brecht,
and the Italian Luigi Pirandello.
O'Neill's body of plays in many
forms—naturalistic, expressionist,
symbolic, psychological—won him
the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936
and indicated the coming-of-age of
American drama.
Bertolt Brecht
Brecht wrote dramas of ideas, usually promulgating
socialist or Marxist theory. In order to make his audience
more intellectually receptive to his theses, he
endeavored—by using expressionist techniques—to make
them continually aware that they were watching a play,
not vicariously experiencing reality.
Luigi Pirandello
For Pirandello, too, it was paramount to fix an awareness
of his plays as theater; indeed, the major philosophical
concern of his dramas is the difficulty of differentiating
between illusion and reality.
The rise of realism
In the 1920s, realism had become
widespread in England, France, and the
United States; in the U.S. theatre
boomed— There were 200 to 275 new
productions a year average. One of the
important groups that enhanced the
theatrical presence in the U.S. was the
Theatre Guild, founded in 1919 with the
intention of bringing important foreign
works to improve theatre in the U.S. By
the mid 1920s, playwrights the United
States were also competing to have their
works produced by the Theatre Guild.
Perhaps the most significant American
playwright to have plays produced by the
Theatre Guild was Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953),
with five of his plays appearing at one time in
New York during the 1924-25 season. O’Neill
helped establish serious realistic Drama as the
main Broadway form. His Long Day’s Journey
Into Night and Desire Under The Elms are two
of his great serious dramas.
The New Stagecraft
Also in the 1920s, came something called "The
New Stagecraft." The Theatrical Syndicate had
pretty much controlled American theatre till
around 1915. But developing around 1910 was a
loose-knit group of what came to be known as
the "little theatres." The Provincetown Players
introduced the work of O’Neill, and the
Washington Square Players, which later evolved
into the Theatre Guild, encouraged the New
Stagecraft.
Notable American Designers
Two major American designers who advocated
this New Stagecraft were Robert Edmund Jones
(1887-1954) and Lee Simonson (1888-1967).
Both were major forces in American theatrical
design in the first half of 20th-century, moving
away from realism and towards suggestion and
mood--perhaps a realism of mood and feeling
would describe its "realist" origins.
HE WHO GETS SLAPPED, Sets and costumes designed by Lee Simonson,
The Theatre Guild, 1922
ROBERT EDMOND JONES
JONES’ design for O’Neill’s
DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS
Production photo from DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, 1924
Robert Edmond Jones design for O’Neill’s THE ICEMAN COMETH
The Provincetown Players
Musical revue
But during the 1920s, as
well, a period known as
the roaring twenties--the
American musical theatre
began to develop more
fully, with the Ziegfeld
Follies offering variety
acts and introducing
songwriters and
performers to theatre
audiences.
Worker’s Theatre
During the decade of the twenties, there were also the
beginnings of the Workers’ Theatre Movement. In 1926, a
small group of authors and theater directors formed the
Workers’ Drama League, and the New Playwrights’
Theatre formed the next year. Both hoped to present
drama that had some social significance and would deal
with some of the problems of the day. The workers’
theatre movement would not develop fully in the United
States until after the stock market crash of October 1929.
WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL
The Glencairn Plays—filmed together as The
Long Voyage Home:
Bound East for Cardiff, 1914
In The Zone, 1917
The Long Voyage Home, 1917
Moon of the Caribbees, 1918
Moon of the Caribees at Provincetown
1924
A revival of the play staged at NYU’s Studio Theatre in 1988
A revival of MOON OF THE CARIBEES presented as part of a
trilogy of O’Neill Sea Plays in NYC by the Wooster Group.
Other one-act plays
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A Wife for a Life, 1913
The Web, 1913
Thirst, 1913
Recklessness, 1913
Warnings, 1913
Fog, 1914
Abortion, 1914
The Movie Man: A
Comedy, 1914
• The Sniper, 1915
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Before Breakfast, 1916
Ile, 1917
The Rope, 1918
Shell Shock, 1918
The Dreamy Kid, 1918
Where the Cross Is
Made, 1918
• Exorcism 1919
• Bread and Butter, 1914
• Servitude, 1914
• The Personal Equation,
1915
• Now I Ask You, 1916
• Beyond the Horizon, 1918
- Pulitzer Prize, 1920
• The Straw, 1919
• Chris Christophersen,
1919
• Gold, 1920
• Anna Christie, 1920 Pulitzer Prize, 1922
• The Emperor Jones, 1920
• Diff'rent, 1921
• The First Man, 1922
• The Hairy Ape, 1922
• The Fountain, 1923
WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL
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Marco Millions, 1923–25
All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1924
Welded, 1924
Desire Under the Elms, 1925
Lazarus Laughed, 1925–26
The Great God Brown, 1926
Strange Interlude, 1928 - Pulitzer
Prize
Dynamo, 1929
Mourning Becomes Electra, 1931
Ah, Wilderness!, 1933
Days Without End, 1933
WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL
• The Iceman Cometh, written 1939, published
1940, first performed 1946
WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL
• Hughie, written
1941, first
performed 1959
• Long Day's Journey
Into Night, written
1941, first
performed 1956 Pulitzer Prize 1957
WORKS BY EUGENE O’NEILL
• A Moon for the Misbegotten, written 1941–
1943, first performed 1947
A Touch of the Poet, completed in 1942, first
performed 1958
More Stately Mansions, second draft found in
O'Neill's papers, first performed 1967
AH, WILDERNESS at ACT
(San Francisco - October 2015)
HUGHIE on Broadway - 2016
Announced earlier this year, Forest Whitaker will make his
Broadway debut next spring in a revival of “Hughie,” a play
by Eugene O’Neill, set in a New York City hotel in 1928, and
centers on a hustler named Erie Smith, who confides in a
night clerk.
The production has now shored-up its team both in front of
and behind the camera, and set a theater and opening date.
Tony Award winner Frank Wood has joined the production,
and will star opposite Whitaker in the play, which will be
housed at the Booth Theatre, with performances (reviews)
set to begin on February 5, 2016, with an official opening on
February 25 for a limited engagement.
O'Neil wrote the play in the 1940s, and it was first staged on
Broadway in 1964, starring Jason Robards.
This revival will be directed by Michael Grandage, former
artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse in London, who
won a 2010 Tony Award for his direction of “Red.”
There was a 1975 revival that starred Ben Gazzara, followed
by another revival, in 1996, starring Al Pacino.