EMPEROR JONES - Eugene O'Neill

I'm going to start this blog with the bit I usually finish with. Could this play be performed in Goulburn today. In it's original form? Hell no!

The elephant in the room with Emperor Jones is the racial stereotyping and racist epithets. The N word is used heavily throughout this play. The main characters speaks in a way that today would be judged as depicting a cliched stereotype and there are a bunch of references to Jones' subjects as "black [inert insult here]."

So those are the impediments to doing the play today. Which is a pity, because it's a damn good play. And no I'm not excusing the language, or even condoning it in its contemporary context.

Because I'm a Eugene O'Neill novice, I've done a bit of research on the guy. It appears that far from being a racist, he created roles for black Americans and helped to increased their visibility in productions. Perhaps the language and characterisations he used in this script are aimed at being deliberately provocative? 

Anyway, that's jumping to the end bit. Let's go back a few steps.

The script

I bloody loved reading this. O'Neill, at least in this play, wrote voluminous stage directions and scene settings... possibly not something directors or actors may have loved but for a reader, it reads like a novel. And it's a short play, so a very quick "novel".

Brutus Jones, a convicted criminal, escapes from a road gang to a small Caribbean island. Utilising bluster and his skill as a con man,  he sets himself up as Emperor of the island imposing heavy taxes on the people. early in his period as Emperor, a villager tries to shoot him but the gun misfires, and Jones uses that to construct a mythology around himself that he can't be killed by anything less than a silver bullet. So that's the set up.

The play starts two years after Jones arrived on the island, and the natives are getting restless... sick of his regal excesses and heavy taxes. In scene one, a white cockney trader tells Jones to beware the ides of now, and that the islanders are ready for revolution. Scenes two to seven are Jones running through the jungle as the drum beat keeps getting louder, and then Smithers and others return for the final scene.

The thing I most enjoyed about this play is that it could easily have been a Twilight Zone episode. Similar to Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, he is visited by visions, or at least memories, of his past that spook him considerably. His reactions, you could even say guilt and regrets, from his past haunt him along his run through the jungle and his dialog works like one long stop-start monolog, the moral of which is you can't run away from your past.

Without giving too much away in spoilers, O'Neill foreshadows the ending with the early reveal of a pistol with six bullets one of them silver. Jones' past DOES catch up with him and superstition, which he weaponised for the natives, plays a large role in his undoing. These visions and the staging of them adds a surreal, expressionist quality to what would otherwise be a straightforward story.

The play is simple, unfettered, quickly engaging and easily followed... certainly moreso than the more complex works of Ibsen and Chekhov. That's not to say that makes it better or worse... if you like it or not, that's your own subjective judgement, but I liked the unconvoluted messaging.

Context is also important, and I know very little about the circumstances in which O'Neill wrote this, or about world politics back in 1920, apparently there is some linkage to the United States occupation of Haiti. But even without knowing that, it's themes clearly include commentary of imperialism, including cultural and economic imperialism, even if that's from the unusual angle of a minority perpetrator.

This was not O'Neill's first play (that was Beyond the Horizon for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama) but it WAS his first big box-office hit and the story telling is so novel and interesting I'm not surprised.

Seeing it

There are very few version of this show available to see, and obviously the language has played a big part of that. There HAVE been theatrical revivals and even a few movie or video performances (including an Australian one) but they are harder to get your hands on than hen's teeth.

The movie version from 1933 is easily accessible on Youtube, and stars the enigmatic Paul Robeson (of Show Boat fame... and a very interesting individual if you have the time to read up on him). This version of the film details all of the back story that the play only alludes to in retrospect, so you're 40 minutes into the film before you get to the point the play starts at. O'Neill himself approved this adaptation and congratulated them on creating a three act story from a one act script. It shows, in a short time frame, Jones's deterioration and using pretty impressive editing techniques for its time, cleverly shows his ghostly delusions. 

This movie version does a pretty good job of telling the story but it is handy to know more than half of it is additional content created to pad the film out. Interestingly enough, the ebook version I bought on Amazon completely left out the entire last scene which is the climax of the whole play. It's handy to remember that books (and that includes scripts) that are out of their copyright protection can be reprinted by anyone and you don't always get the real deal. Fortunately I found a free copy online that only had a few pages extra, but those pages made a big differences.

Could it be performed it Goulburn - Part II

It's pretty unlikely it could be performed in it's original state. Frequent use of the N word and other derogatory descriptions preceded by the word Black would make it very hard to get off the ground as a production, or to perform without protest or sell tickets to. Maybe some productions get around this by a very specific warning about the content and context, but even then... it's a tough sell.

You could potentially modify the language... but it would need so much modification that at some point it may cease to be the original work. 

Those are choices for a production team. But it's themes - imperialism, power, guilt, racial identity, mistreatment of indigenous people and the poor - are still very much worth accessing and retelling. And the story telling techniques and surreality would still be very engaging and attractive. Would they still prove popular enough with local audiences? I'm certain they would. And whether it's ever performed in Goulburn or not, I'm very keen to encounter more of the works of Eugene O'Neill.

Materials accessed:

• "Emperor Jones" - (script) 1920. Available freely in many places - here's a link to it at the Public Library UK.
• "Emperor Jones" - (movie) 1933. Freely available at Youtube at this link.