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Essays by contributors from diverse fields offer fresh perspectives on and penetrating interpretations of America's one indisputable world-class dramatist. Moorton's introduction vigorously defends O'Neill's tragedy, locating its genius in the violation of intimate relationships, especially the family. Three major divisions consider the nature of O'Neill's dramaturgy, the cultural and autobiographical sources of his art, and the challenges inherent in staging that art. The essays range from literary criticism and psychoanalytic and feminist interpretations of the plays, to O'Neill in translation, and the playwright from an actor's perspective. ... Read more

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Arguing that the 1964 edition of Eugene O'Neill's unfinished play More Stately Mansions, prepared after the playwright's death, was missing a substantial amount of material that O'Neill intended for inclusion, Martha Bower here presents an entirely new edition of the play with this material--dialogue, character description, an entire scene, the epilogue, and large parts of other scenes--restored. Published to coincide with the centennial of O'Neill's birth, it will stand as an important contribution to O'Neill scholarship. ... Read more

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Forces that they cannot understand or conquer drive O'Neill's characters. In the milieu of theater, the playwright brings these themes to their extremes. On symbolic and literal levels, these three plays expose the instincts and learned behaviors of humans and how they affect us in our search for a "spiritual place." ... Read more

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Modernization of Oresteia
Mourning becomes electra is well known as a modernization of the Greek myth of the Oresteria.Perhaps the difference between Aeschylus and O'neill is to some degree a measure of the extent to which the weakening ofthe sanctions has weakend the emotions with they supported. ... Read more

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This is the first full production history of Long Day's Journey Into Night, by Eugene O'Neill. It provides a detailed account of the most significant productions throughout the world, on stage, film, and television. The book conveys the unique interpretations of the Tyrone family by such actors as Fredric March, Jason Robards, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, Katharine Hepburn, Colleen Dewhurst, Ruby Dee, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, and Alan Bates, among other distinguished theatre artists. This history includes a production chronology, bibliography, discography and videography. ... Read more

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Definitive Study of a Great American Play
Brenda Murphy's exhaustively researched book on the complete (as of the book's original publication) production history of Eugene O'Neill's 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' was a total joy to read, from cover to cover.

She leaves virtually no stone unturned in her recounting of the details -- both technical and artistic -- of each major (and some not-so-major) production of this justly revered classic and her analysis, while carefully considered and thorough, is expressed in prose which is never dry or dull, but conveys as much of the immediacy of each interpretation as possible.

The question has never been whether or not 'Long Day's Journey' is a "Great American Play", but, rather, if it is "THE Great American Play". Well, having been madly in love with this play since I first saw it as an impressionable young teenager, I'd have to say that my vote goes solidly with O'Neill's darkly moving masterpiece. But in a recent poll of the American public, 'Death Of A Salesman' came in first as the greatest American play, with 'LDJIN' coming in 2nd, if memory serves. So, there you go. And I can't quibble too much as I also fervently love 'Salesman', which would have been my 2nd choice! (And Brenda Murphy has ALSO written an equally fine study of THAT American classic, as well as Tennesse Williams' haunting masterwork 'A Streetcar Named Desire', another play I treasure.)

Basically, the list of great plays goes on and on. And don't even get me STARTED on British & Irish Theatre, where, from Shakespeare to Beckett to Pinter, I'd be making lists for DAYS! But, with fine writer/scholars like Brenda Murphy out there chronicling the living histories of important theatrical productions of dramatic literature's finest and most enduring works, we theatre-lovers and theatre-history buffs are in good hands indeed!

Keep up the fine and important work, Ms. Murphy! (And how about updated editions of your 'Salesman' & 'LDJIN' books which can include even more recent productions like the much-acclaimed, multi Tony-winning Broadway 'Salesman' with Brian Dennehy and 'Long Day's Journey' with Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave, et al?) ... Read more

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Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggles will become one of the handful of standard studies of O'Neill's life and work. --- Frederick C. Wilkins, Editor, The Eugene O'Neill Review "A unique and extremely valuable work. Reading this book is also a delightful experience---the imaginative quality of the scholarship is dazzling." ---William J. Fisher, Rutgers UniversityIn Eugene O'Neill's Creative Struggle, Doris Alexander gives us a new kind of inside biography that begins where the others leave off. It follows O'Neill through the door into his writing room to give a blow-by-blow account of how he fought out in his plays his great life battles--- love against hate, doubt against belief, life against death--- to an ever-expanding understanding. It presents a new kinds of criticism, showing how O'Neill's most intimate struggles worked their way to resolution through the drama of his plays. Alexander reveals that he was engineering his own consciousness through his plays and solving his life problems--- while the tone, imagery, and richness of the plays all came out of the nexus of memories summoned up by the urgency of the problems he faced in them. By the way of O'Neill, this study moves toward a theory of the impulse that sets off a writer's creativity, and a theory of how that impulse acts to shape a work, not only in a dramatist like O'Neill but also in the case of writers in other meduims, and even of painters and composers. The study begins with Desire Under the Elms because that play's plot was consolidated by a dream that opened up the transfixing grief that precipitated the play for O'Neill, and it ends with Days Without End when he had resolved his major emotional-philosophical striggle and created withing himself the voice of his final great plays. Since the analysis brings to bear on the plays all of his concious decisions, ideas, theories, as well as the life-and-death struggles motivating them, documenting even the final creative changes made during rehearsals, ... Read more

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the last phase of O'Neill's creative life
In comparing the "facts of the plays with the documentary evidence of the historical record, [this work] offers what is really a first study in biography based on knowledge of what in a work are the fact's of [O'Neill's] life and what are not." As psychologically incisive and true-to-life as O'Neill's last plays were, with their richly-drawn, identifiable, flawed, characters, they were particularly susceptible to biographical interpretations and such points of view by critics and even scholars. Among the mixed biographical and literary topics concerning this major American playwright Alexander brings clarity to from poring over material lately uncovered and rereadings of some known material are O'Neill's suicide attempt, his illness of tuberculosis, and his relationship with his parents. Alexander, professor emerita of English at CUNY, gives only passing conjecture on why such "myths" arose in the first place or persisted on the basis of nonexistent, scant, or clearly contradictory evidence. The reasons for such errors or misguided interpretations of O'Neill's late plays--no doubt growing out of an awe and mystique surrounding O'Neill as a deeply impressive, preternaturally gifted playwright--is an absorbing topic on its own--but beyond the interest or scope of Alexander here. The author focuses on how such errors came to be, and on clearing them up. In this, she brings much clarity, and sometimes definitiveness, to mistakenly held views and some outright fictions of both O'Neill's life and his late plays, all without lowering this playwright's stature. ... Read more

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"Shaughnessy's Eugene O'Neill in Ireland: The Critical Response is both more and less than a detailed study of how O'Neill's plays have fared in his ancestral homeland. Part theater history and part influence study, part production sourcebook and part anthology of criticism, this volume touches on all the possible connections between the playwright and the country to which he was so closely tied." American Literature ... Read more

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Good overview of a groundbreaking American dramatist
This book from Frederick Ungar Publishing's Modern Literature Monographs series is clear, thoughtful, and engaging...from a decidedly European perspective. In fact, I suspect many American literary critics fail to place the necessary emphasis on European models (Strindberg, Ibsen, and Georg Kaiser). Horst Frenz helped me, for the first time, to appreciate O'Neill's love-hate relationship with the commercialism and mediocrity of American theater in the era immediately preceding the one he transformed. (Clearly his father's bitterness at being a successful actor who was unchallenged by the roles available to him created a profound wariness in his son.)

Also to be appreciated is the way Horst keeps biographical details to a minimum (just enough to help the reader get a handle on the wide range plays O'Neill turned out). I felt I got the overview I desired from this brief introduction to the playwright. If I was left wanting more, it was more clarification on how O'Neill related to (and influenced) his contemporary playwrights, especially Tennessee Williams. But overall, the book's brevity is its clearest asset. ... Read more

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Three major works by the greatest of American dramatists are presented in this volume: Desire Under the Elms, Strange Interlude, and Morning Becomes Electra. ... Read more