According to your point of view Eugene O'Neill is accused of or credited with dragging the American Theatre into the twentieth century/creating the American Theatre single handedly. The facts are documented: prior to O'Neill theatre in America comprised European imports - Viennese operettas, Shakespeare, Wilde, and 62 melodramas of New Yorker Clyde Fitch that barely outlived the author (Fitch died in 1909). O'Neill offered Naturalism, Expressionism, flesh-and-blood characters rather than cardboard cutouts and arguably paved the way for Sydney Howard, Robert E. Sherwood, Philip Barry, Clifford Odets. Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. If you are familiar with his life - his father, James O'Neill, had known crippling poverty in Ireland, become an acclaimed Shakespearean actor ranked alongside Edwin Booth, bought the rights to The Count of Monte Christo, toured it for years making a fortune but emasculating his talent. His elder son was an alcoholic waster, his wife, Ella, suffered a difficult birth of the younger son, Eugene, was given morphine and became hopelessly addicted - you will get that much more from Long Day's Journey Into Night. In setting it down on paper O'Neill followed two aids to the craft: write what you know and compress the events of days, weeks, months, even years into two hours or so, telescoping time. The four Tyrones, mother, father, two sons, clearly lacerated themselves over half a lifetime but O'Neill heightens the agony by staging it in one endless day. Both writing and acting are beyond praise. O'Neill diedin 1953 yet he is the only credited writer so we have to assume Lumet filed the text of the play as performed in the theatre. This is an invaluable record of a masterpiece.
Review of Long Day's Journey Into Night
