THE ICEMAN COMETH - Eugene O'Neill

 

Every now and then a phrase or the title of a piece of creative fiction passes from the page into real life. For example, "Catch 22," Big Brother, "The Breakfast of Champions." "The Iceman Cometh" has been used and abused, adapted and adopted frequently in popular culture, including quite a bit in sport. The phrase itself is an adaptation of a biblical quotation (more about it below). So there's a reasonable chance most people have heard it, or something like it, without necessarily knowing the context. 

Like quite a few of Eugene O'Neill's plays, it's widely regarded as one of the greatest works of American Theatre... some even call it THE best. And I have to say, it's very good.

Before I dig into the play, the usual caveats apply regarding O'Neill's plays... toooo long, hard to produce in an unabbreviated form and hard to hang on to audience interest. The full version clocks in at about 5 hours (although it is almost always dramatically edited in modern performances. As the last O'Neill play on my list,  I have to admit I'll be glad to be through the mammoth reading and viewing time required by his plays.  

BUT..."The Iceman Cometh" is clever, it has a few (and not too many) central unifying themes, has a lot of characters but utilises them well, contains some wonderful monologs and, like many great works of fiction, poses uncomfortable but engaging philosophic questions.

The play

The play is set in a flop house, or doss house, above a dead end saloon, in which its residents... twelve men and three prostitutes ... relive endless days of drinking themselves to alcoholic stupor. Many, through shared back stories an exposition, tell us how they came to be there (or how others came to be here) and most share their "pipe dreams" of how they are going to turn their lives around real soon and rejoin the outside world in a significant way real soon. Maybe tomorrow.

As we join the characters, they are awaiting the arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman. Hickey, the consummate salesman and story teller, tours much of the east coast of the United States on his salesman route, and always drops in Harry Hope's saloon at least twice a year. When he visits, he captivates them all with engaging tales of his travels, pipe dreams of the future and fun stories. His visits are a highlight in their despairing, repetitive lives and, as the play starts, the motley crew are now waking up to Harry's birthday and the expectation that Hickey will be there soon.

And h's there. But he's changed. No longer quite the same bon vivant he was... well, not exactly... he encourages them to give up on their self delusions (the things that have been making their current lives and routines bearable). He says that he has given up on pipe dreams, embraced living truthfully, and (most disturbingly) has given up the grog. None of this is taken well.

Over the next few hours, as he has a rest, various individuals question their own pipe dreams (and sorry for repeating that phrase but it's the one the script keeps falling back on to describe self delusions and misplaced hope). Without going too deeply into the back story of each character, there are two former combatants of borh sides of the Boer War, who have become friends; there's Harry, the widowed proprietor of the saloon and his brother-in-law Ed; there's a former lawyer, a former journo, a former editor of an anarchistic publication, and a former policeman; there's Joe, an African American former proprietor of a gambling house (and yep, he gets called the N word); there's the bartender three "ladies of the night"; and the boyfriend of one of the ladies. 

The two other characters are particularly significant to the story. Larry Slade, a former union focused anarchist who acts as a foil to Hickey and engages him in arguments frequently, and Don Parritt, the son of a syndicalist anarchist that Larry used to date. Don tries to engage the fairly curmudgeonly Larry, talking about how his mother had been turned over to the police for her anti-establishment practices and speeches, and over time we discover that it was Don himself who turned her in.  He is consumed with guilt.

In fact, it's not a great time for anyone. As they confront the realities that their pipe dreams and self-delusions have held at bay, it all gets very edgy and snappy. Several come to blows. There are even weapons drawn.

But soon enough, Hickey is back with them. And being a party, he brings presents including much booze. As they join at a meal table together, words are said, differences are exchanged... kind of like a Festivus practice from Seinfeld of the airing of grievances. But Hickey decides to have just one drink to show them he didn't stop drinking just to be a wowser, and the party continues.

The final monolog by Hickey is the climax of the play, and being that it's O'Neill, it's bloody long. Coming in at about 30 minutes, you could actually watch a full episode of Seinfeld, complete with commercials, as he delivers it.

But it's GOOD. It's really well written and I can understand why actors would be drawn to it. (And warning...there be spoilers a-coming).

Hickey weaves a story that shows the life he has lived on the road. Always the gregarious funster, he cheated on his wife (who he genuinely seems to love very much) frequently on the road. And while he never declares it to her, and can tell she knows but she loves him so much that she forgives him. She forgives his drinking, his embarrassment of her and the many ways he has let her down... always forgiven, always loved. As Hickey tells his story, Don Parish reflects on the similarities to how he let his mother down.

And Hickey also explains how he came home with an STD, for which he made up a cockamamie excuse, that she accepted to his face, and his guilt grew even more. He make the excuse that her kindness made him feel guiltier and he began to hate her for it. He couldn't live like this. He thought he could leave her, but she would live with having been deserted and unloved. He could kill himself, but that would have the same effect on her. Or he could kill her. She would die without ever having felt rejection and loss. And so he kills her. 

Struggling with a similar guilt, Don Parritt takes one of the paths Hickey mentioned but did not take, and killed himself. When police come to get Hickey, as a man, the barflies say he was mad, and didn't know what he was saying, much less doing. But this isn't simply an act of brotherhood for Hickey... they don't want to confront cold reality, and want to return to their convenient pipedreams of things that they might do tomorrow... or the next day... or the next.

My thoughts

Hickey's monologue, in my opinion, is O'Neill's best piece of writing in any of the five plays I've read and seen. Forgetting my ongoing concerns with his brevity, and lack thereof, he has always showcased great poetry, precision and power in his writing. Built slowly, O'Neill somehow makes the unthinkable and inexcusable at least understandable from a certain viewpoint. O'Neill makes that viewpoint and makes an example that none of us (hopefully) would follow but that seems to convincingly portray Hickey's point of view and motivations.

I've not seen much written about the angle I'm about to suggest, but for me the play represents a sort of purgatory, with the residents stuck in a permanently repeating limbo that never improves and in which nothing actually happens. The idea of a saloon where no-one so much as budges from their seats and tables, much less goes to bed, much less engages in the real world gave me that very strong vibe of being somewhat outside of this world but not having moved completely on to the next.

And regardless of whether that's what O'Neill intended, I really like that interpretation. They are lost souls, unable to move on until they confront their pasts an failings and prepare to break their cycles. But they wont. The last scene cements that they prefer their self-delusions to learning and moving on, and these factors give emphasis to the themes of hope v hopelessness, delusion v reality and living v existing.

And it's worth returning to the appropriateness of the title. What started as an ongoing joke Hickey would tell during his visits, along the lines that while he is away, the iceman (exactly as it states, the guy who delivers ice) takes advantage of his absence and fools around with his wife. And of course she is not fooling around on him, the exact opposite is true. But the iceman does come, where ice is the coldness of death that comes for his wife. 

The phrase "the iceman cometh" is a derivation of the biblical passage Matthew 25:6: "And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him." The meaning of this parable is the importance of readiness and watchfulness as the timing of Christ's return is unknown. While that's not a direct analogic element to this play, it's a chilling additional emphasis that this all ends whether we are ready or not, and a component of the existential, nihilistic tone of the play. 

The elephant in the room again is length. Done more quickly, I believe this could be an even punchier play with greater resonance and impact, but I've made this point enough times I guess and am starting to flog a dead horse.

But even with the excessive length, it is a play with great bones and meat to it. On the plus side of length, each of the "residents" of Harry's saloon have a chance to give us at least a glimpse into their lives, some more than others. There are a variety of viewpoints and life experiences and cutting the dialog and exposition any further could diminish the point.

The version I saw

As with so many plays, the performance and production of a play can make or break our experience of it. I did start out watching a 1960 Sidney Lumet production of it but didn't continue. While it had Jason Robards as Hickey and a young Robert Redford as Don Parritt, it was too dour for me and a punish to continue with.

My second attempt fared much better. The 1972 Production included a very young Jeff Bridges as Parritt, Moses Gunn as Joe, Frederic March as Harry, Robert Ryan as Larry and Lee Marvin as Hickey.

Robert Ryan is one of the great under-rated actors of the fifties and sixties and he is a brilliant, grounded foil to Marvin's gregarious Hickey. And even though I was already a Lee Marvin fan, I think this is his greatest performance. He plays Hickey a bit like Robert Preston's Harold Hill in "The Music Man"... big, brassy  and enthusiastic and always on the sell. 

It's not at all surprising when you see this version of Hickey that the barflies are so excited in anticipation of his semi-regular visits. And his performance of the final monologue, in my humble opinion, is truly Oscar worthy, and the sort of thing actors wanting to show their dramatic chops would jump at. Flicking between flippant and light, to dramatic and angry Marvin draws the audience in, and even though you begin to guess where he's going, you want him to be absolutely certain.

This version gave a very strong purgatory vibe as the resident's at Harry's remained, for the most part, slumped over their tables into the night, and on through the next day, ad infinitum. The dreariness made it difficult to sit through initially until the story eventually begins to unfold. I should add also, this movie version of the play is meant to run for 4 hours (a substantial editing of the original) however the version I saw on Tubi was chopped down to 3 hours... still a bit on the long side I felt, but I should count my blessings.

Final thoughts on this play and on Eugene O'Neill.

Starting with this play, absolutely it could work in Goulburn in the here and now. In fact I'd really like to see many of the great confrontations and monologues performed locally, however as with all of the O'Neill plays I've read and watched (except for Emperor Jones, which has its own issues), it would need considerable shortening to hold most audiences.

As to O'Neill, held up by many as one of the greatest English language playwrights of the 20th century, does he live up to it? Geez, how do you measure that. many experts say an unequivocal yes.  But I equivocate. Maybe his plays were so long because it was a different time where such longer plays were expected or at least enjoyed. Or maybe it's my personal limitations, possibly some level of ADHD and other personal failings. 

The guy could write! His dialog, particularly in shared and dramatic scenes, is punchy, and engaging and beautifully written. He has won more Pulitzer Prizes for Drama than any other person and a stack of other awards. I don't seek to detract from that, but in general, in thei complete state, they are too long for me.

Having said that, I quite liked most of them. I thought "The Iceman Cometh" is exceptional, the "Long Day's Journey into Night" is a fantastic and influential (if repetitive) piece of theatre realism, and I have been inspired by "Mourning becomes Electra" to have a swing at writing my own adaptation of Aeschylus' "The Oresteia."

So while this session of studying O'Neill has at times felt like excessive homework and sometimes required persistence over enjoyment, I agree that he is one of the greats, that I learned quite a bit and I am glad to now have an experiential appreciation of his work.

Materials accessed:

• "The Iceman Cometh" - script (1946). - available in numerous places online for free. Here it is at Project Gutenberg Australia.
• "The Iceman Cometh" - movie (1960). Viewable for free on Youtube.
• "The Iceman Cometh" - movie (1973). Three hour version viewable for free on Tubi (but you need to create an account. Four hour version available on Youtube.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT - Eugene O'Neill

 

Eugene O'Neill is the only playwright to win a fourth Pulitzer Prize for Drama four times, and this is the play that won the fourth time, as well as the Tony Award for Best Play. It's also regarded by many critics as his greatest work, and one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century.

And it's quite good. On a personal level I very much appreciated that, coming in under 3 hours, it's much shorter than the last two plays of his that I watched.

I don't know that I'd call it one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century but as I'm becoming increasingly aware, individual mileage can vary greatly. And I have to factor in my reactions are specifically to the 1962 movie I watched. But the fact that it won both the Tony and the Pulitzer attests to a significant amount of critical appreciation .

A bit of background... O'Neill wrote this play in 1939 and continued to revise it until 1941. Because of its particularly auto-biographical self-revelatory, he didn't want it ever to be performed and didn't even want it published however he eventually supplied it to publishers in 1945 conditionally that it could not be published until 25 years after his death. 

O'Neill died eight years later (1953) and shortly after his death his wife demanded that his publishers rescind those instructions and publish the play, which against their wishes they did. From first completing the play until publication represents a gap of 17 years, so it was a long play's journey into publication.

The journey

Another O'Neill play with a poetic title, the Long Day in question is the setting for the play. The whole thing happens over one day as a family of two sons along with their mother and father gather at a holiday home in Connecticut.

The premise is that, gathered together, the four are forced to confront their flaws, their unresolved interpersonal issues

For mine, the greatest strength of the play is the poetry of the language used by O'Neill, especially in the longish reflections and expositions. There are so many beautifully worded lines, and also some clever witty ones. One of my favourite lines from Edmund's father to him after being accused of being cheap and offering to send him to a cut-price sanatorium to treat his tuberculosis/consumption.

"You can go to any place you choose, never mind what it costs. Any place... I can afford. Any place... within reason."

Another thing that comes through strongly is the awkwardness of some usually-avoided painful and even devastating conversations. The play represents 24 hours of soul-searching and soul-bearing, touching on a number of taboos and family secrets and confessions, including drug use, failed career options, internal family blames and hostility and mental health (not specifically stated but seemingly intertwined with Mary's addiction). And I also quite liked the way O'Neill directed traffic, creating moments for characters in different combinations to have conversations specific to each relationship.

Aside from the length (again, better than some of O'Neill's marathons but still quite hefty) my biggest misgiving is the repetition of the number of times a character will express their extreme anger to another, then sort it out and apologise, only to then repeat the cycle again. It happens a lot. I think the intent is to show that families are repetitious and go through the same actions, and same conversations over and over again. And that's true. I just felt O'Neill continued beyond the point of having established that point.

There are some profound statements and engaging exchanges...Eugene's late night discussion with his father helps him understand his dad a lot better. My favourite conversations is the late night conversation between the brothers... a little less recrimination than some of the other scene couples and quite a bit of real connection and genuine sharing between to brothers who happened to to be best friends who "love each others guts," although even that features some mean mood swings.

Clearly one of the most praised playwrights of the 20th century needs no advice that I can offer, but if I was offering advice, this would have felt far stronger to me if (a) a lot of the dramatic moments were repeated with little addition to the play and (b) if it didn't lean so close to melodrama with the rapid emotional swings.

The versions I saw

I watched the 1962 film starring Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. Obviously acting styles and direction have changed over the years, but even allowing for that I found this enjoyable... yet somewhat overacted. And not by the actors you'd possibly suspect.

I did like the camera work, sets and lighting a lot... closeups are used particularly well. 

Ralph Richardson delivered a powerful version of James but I thought he added just a little too much sauce, especially in the most dramatic moments. Even allowing for the fact his character is meant to be an actor of modest ability with a love for Shakespeare, I thought his delivery at times was overly melodramatic and attemptedly Shakespearean beyond what was required.

Katherine Hepburn covers a wide range of emotions but the switch up between deliriously happy, to deeply sad or angry is whiplash fast and you could do yourself an injury trying to keep up. As with Ralph Richardson's performance, I'm sure she and the director interpreted the script that way and no doubt thought it might be an Oscar-winning performance (and it did earn her a nomination) but I felt she was cranked up to 11 to a distracting degree.

Jason Robards isn't someone who has ever struck me as having great range but I thought he was quite good in this and spot on for the character (although as with the others the mercurial swings take some absorbing), but for me the highlight was a very young Dean Stockwell. I probably first encountered him in "Quantum Leap" and later saw him in other works, but in a cast with far greater experience then he, I thought he stood out with a nuanced, emotional and touching portrayal.

Misgivings aside, this film is well worth a watch. The final scene is an exceptionally good piece of cinematography, all gathered in a room and realising they may have made no progress and be stuck exactly where they started, extreme closeups then pulled back away to indicate the discussions and arguments continue on.

The other version I saw I liked a lot more. It was the pro-shot video of the Apollo Theatre production of 2012 with Laurie Metcalf (from Roseanne and a whole lot of other things) and Poirot's David Suchet. The acting is uniformly stronger... less jerky emotional switches (even if the text remains the same) and the relationships between the characters come off more realistic. It felt, to coin the cliche, more real and more powerful as a result.

Final words

It's a good play, and deserves to be understood in context of how novel a narrative it was for its time, and how closely it reflected the life experience of its playwright.

I don't know if the lengthy gap (16 years) between this work and O'Neill's last published work "A Touch of the Poet," added to the prestige and nostalgia and fondness for the gifted playwright. More likely the critics and audiences of the time, and many since, just hold to a slightly different evaluation than me.  

This could certainly be performed locally... in fact I could definitely seeing local performers wanting to do it and local audiences wanting to see it. My only real criticisms relate to length, repetition and the potential of overacting the quick emotional swings. I'm probably splitting hairs.

Well done, Mr O'Neill. Nicely written.

Materials Accessed:

• "Long Day's Journey into Night" - script (1939). There are several places you can access a free copy online. Here's one from the Internet Archive.
• "Long Day's Journey into Night" - movie (1962). Available to view for free on Youtube.
• "Long Day's Journey into Night" - pro-shot video (2012). Available for streaming by subscription on Digital Theatre.
• "Long Day's Journey into Night" - filmed play (2017). Available to view for free on Youtube.

MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA - Eugene O'Neill

 

Firstly... damn you, Eugene O'Neill and your mammoth plays.

The previous one I looked at, "Strange Interludes", when performed unabridged rang for 5-6 hours.

And this play, "Mourning becomes Electra", is actually THREE plays in one... a trilogy or play cycle intended to be performed in one setting.

And despite it's cursed length, I actually liked it. 

In some small way, the length of this play isn't Mr O'Neill's fault. The "Mourning becomes Electra" trilogy is based on "The Oresteia" by Aeschylus, a play trilogy .... And I think it help understand the play better when you look at the work that inspired it.

The Oresteia

A little less than 500 BC, plays were sometimes presented as trilogies... three related stories telling one overall story. These were pretty common, but only one survives to this day, "The Oresteia" by Aeschylus (the Oedipus cycle doesn't count as those three plays were written over a longer period.

The three plays that make up "The Oresteia" are "Agamemnon", "The Libation Bearers" and "The Eumenides." Broadly speaking, the stories depicted across the three plays runs parallel to Homer's "The Odyssey" which was composed something like 300 years earlier, give or take a century, and which contains a number of the same characters.

In "Agamemnon", King Agamemnon of Mycenae has returned home after leading the Greek forces during the ten year long Trojan War. He arrives home straight after the war whereas Odysseus takes a further 10 years to get home (guys not wanting to ask directions, am I right). And here we have a contrast... Penelope, wife of Odysseus, waited the ten years of the war, and a further ten years, remaining true to Odysseus. Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra, on the other hand, shacked up with one of Agamemnon's mortal enemies (he had a few... this one was called Aegisthus) in his absence. However Agamemnon had taken a concubine of his own (spoils of war), Cassandra... the legendary prophetess and daughter of Trojan King Priam. Cassandra could see the future but was cursed to have no-one ever believe her prophecies.

For several reasons (she didn't want to give up on her new relationship, she wanted to keep control of Mycenae from Agamemnon, she was angry about his bringing home a concubine and, most importantly, she did not forgive Agamemnon for sacrificing his own daughter Iphigenia before the God's would let him and his troops sail to Troy. So, following Aegisthus' urging, she kills Agamemnon and Cassandra (who predicted the whole mess but was disbelieved... again). Worried for her young brother Orestes due to his male lineage to the thrown, Agamemnon's daughter Electra helps Orestes make his escape.

In "The Libation Bearers", Orestes returns, now a grown man. Orestes meets up with Electra at their father's grave. Orestes advises that Apollo had commanded him to avenge his father's death and there, at the graveside, the two (accompanied by the chorus), determine they will murder Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon's. Orestes presents himself at the place and, unrecognised by his mother, he tells her that Orestes has died. Clytemnestra calls for Aegisthus to join her so she could pass on the news, and when he arrives Orestes kills him and then his mother.

In "The Eumenidies,"  Orestes is pursued by the Furies, a trio of goddesses who were the instruments of justice for all the Gods. After close shaves, and thanks to the assistance of Apollo, Orestes escape them until the ghost of Clytemnestra wakes the sleeping Furies at one point to urge them to avenge her. It's complex... he killed his mum but he avenged his dad. He broke with common law but followed Apollo's dictates.

To decide the mess, Goddess Athena sets up the first ever courtroom trial. The twelve person jury is split six all and Athena casts her deciding vote to let Orestes off. The Furies are... furious... and Athena calms them be renaming them the Eumenidies, or gracious ones, and AThena further rules that justice must be decided in court rather than meted out personally.

Back to "Mourning becomes Electra"

So all of that lengthy backstory (apologies) is useful to see in which ways O'Neill's modern take differs, and why. And he quit deliberately left no doubt that his play shares substantial links with "The Oresteia" by naming the play as he did, given that there is no Electra in his play.

Just a quick bit on Electra, she is a major cultural character. Three separate Greek playwrights... Aeschylus (458 BC), Sophocles (418 BC) and Euripides (410 BC) wrote plays about her, so too in his way has Eugene O'Neill and others, and her story gave birth to the now somewhat dated term, the Electra Complex. Which we'll get back to.

Just as in the Oresteia, the story picks up with a husband/father returning home from war. O'Neill chose the American Civil War for his adaptation (and I feel adaptation is probably incorrect as it is in many ways a new story and a new take, but he drew the lines of similarity so I'll run with it.)  The Civil war, especially at the time of writing, was a lot fresher and more culturally connected to contemporary audiences and American audiences at the time of writing and production, but still sufficiently in the rear view mirror to allow for cultural and attitudinal changes in the time since.

While this play is not a note for note replication of the Oresteia, there are quite deliberate similarities. Many of the characters are very closely based on characters from Aeschylus' play. Electra becomes Lavinia, Agamemnon becomes General Ezra Mannon, Clytemnestra becomes Christine, Or4stes becomes Orin, Aegisthus becomes Adam Brant and some other smaller characters are retained other different names. 

But O'Neill didn't create this adaptation as an opportunity to reflect his memory or understanding of the original, or to show how he can assiduously copy someone else work. He uses the original as shorthand so that viewers/readers will notice the differences.

Many of the themes remain. Both plays examine justice versus retribution. They both consider cycles of violence and generational violence. Family duty versus moral obligations remains. Gender dynamics and power exist in both. And blame. Both are BIG TIME studies of blaming others, or outside concepts, instead of accepting blame from within.

But there are differences. Obviously references to, or the existence of the Gods and mystical powers isn't present in "Mourning becomes Electra". The Greek Chorus mostly disappears aside from a few expositionary characters. And with the disappearance of the Gods, so too disappears the concept of the idea that the family is cursed. Well, sort of. There are generational actions that filter down and get repeated, but it's nowhere near as fatalistic. 

This play challenges the concept in plays of earlier generations that people are puppets to fate, or the Gods, or the powers that be. In much the same way that psychiatry questioned the religious belief in externalised evil and demons that guided our actions, this play makes quite a different point to "The Oresteias" in terms of owning your actions.

And because I haven't studied "The Oresteias" and am relying in my memory/knowledge of Greek myth, I can't remember to what degree blame was shifted home so heavily upon Lavinia/Electra (although with so many plays about the latter, that's a definite maybe). In this play, Lavinia is written as very much a modern day conniving Lady Macbeth (or Grima Wormtongue if you're more of a Lord of the Rings fan). She not only persistently pushes Orin/Orestes to kill their mum, but then conspires and manipulates others in a range of ways.

Final thoughts

This is a lot more than I intended to write so I'll wrap it up.

It's a good play. Eugene O'Neill sure can write, and can make interesting characters. But if I can briefly address the ghost of the great playwright. Mr O'Neill...Eugene... I am not fit to hold a pencil in your shadow but IT'S TOO BLOODY LONG! As was "Strange Interlude".

I can't speak for everyone's attention span but mine is nowhere near up to this. I'll give you a brief pass son this one because it's possibly you were trying to stay true in many ways to the source piece

I decided early on that, aside from flicking through the text, I had no hope of reading this as well as watching it. So I watched the 1978 miniseries broadcast on PBS Great Performances which ran over five 48 minute episodes. Credit to them, that is a much better way to consume so a large piece although since I needed to binge it to get it done in time it was still 4 hours of, at times, stretched out and repetitive viewing. Also, stretched over 5 48 minute segments made it hard to figure where each part of the trilogy started and stopped. There are other video versions online but I didn't have the stamina to try them as well.

Roberta Maxwell, who I know nothing about, was really quite good as Lavinia, and I especially like the fact that she closely resembled the actress playing her mother (Joan Hackett). Some others I recognised... Jeffrey DeMunn (who played Paul Giamatti's a%#hole of a dad in "Billions") playing the a%#hole cuckolder Captain Adam Brant, a very young Bruce Davison and an also very young Peter Weller ("Robocop" and "Buckaroo Banzai") in the first role I've seen him in where he wasn't chewing up the scenery.

It was an enjoyable way to take in this play. Is it great? I think so. Could it be done in Goulburn today? Well yes, but at 4-5 hours, I think this adaptation needs further adaptation (and I'm already on to it).

It's more proof that Eugene O'Neill is talented with quill in hand. Not for nothing, I love the poetry of the title... nothing becomes Electra so much as mourning. It's clever phrasing. Bu balanced against that, old Eugene was not terribly considerate of his viewing audience. The length is a matter of personal preference... you decide if the squeeze is worth the juice.

Materials accessed:

• "Mourning becomes Electra" - script (1931). Available several places online for free including this version at Coldreads.
• "Mourning become Electra" - miniseries (1978). Viewable for free on Youtube.

STRANGE INTERLUDES - Eugene O'Neill

What's the longest play or movie you've seen?

There are some ridiculously long entries in the Guinness Book of World Records, many of which are experimental and aren't aiming at keeping an audience, so let's just stick to mainstream box office movies.

The Lord of the Rings films averaged out at 3 hours and 48 minutes. A number of recent films tap out at near or just over the three hour mark.

It may come as a shock then, to the casual or occasional theatre consumer, to know that "Strange Interludes" by Eugene O'Neill, in its complete and unedited form, runs for between five and six hours. Yep... very nearly a complete day at work for many people. Take a cut lunch, maybe even a bed roll.

What I'm saying is, it's objectively long. Nine acts covering 25 years (and seeming to run for at least half of that), it is nonetheless a theatrical favourite. And despite my taking the piss due tom it's length, I liked it a lot too.

"Strange Interludes" became the first play to also be a national bestseller in print (it's length probably helped in that regard), won for O'Neill his second Pulitzer Prize for Drama (he would win a third with "Long Day's Journey into Night" in 1957) and it has been revived numerous times the world over. And, fortunately for audiences, often in a much shorter form. The Simon Stone adaptation at Sydney's Belvoir Theatre, for instance,  was cut to just two hours twenty, and that included the intermission.

It was instantly successful, critically acclaimed, significantly awarded and frequently revived. So what's it all about.

What's it all about

Nina Leeds is a thoroughly modern lady as we pick up the story shortly after the cessation of the first world war. She is in a state of mourning because her betrothed, Gordon Shaw, died in service of his country and she did not get to consummate the relationship.

Stricken with sadness and guilt, she volunteers as a nurse at a hospital for returning veterans, and offers herself sexually to some of the injured returned servicemen (but only those who fought). In a complex love quadrangle, she is surrounded by three men who in varying ways by three men:

- Charles Marsden... lifelong pal, confidante and platonic friend... or does he want more?

- Sam Evans... gosh-darned boy next door and friend of her former fiance Gordon. His motivations are of the highest order and he is willing to be patient as Nina continues to process her grief from Gordon's passing.

- Edmund Darrell... another acquaintance of Gordon's, and of Sam's. Something of a cad and a blighter at times, he pushes Nina towards the unexciting Sam whilst continuing to get a bit of Nina-loving on the side.

With the urging of both other men, Nina accepts a largely unloving betrothal to Sam and sets her mind to having a child with him who could replace Gordon... but her new mother in law confides in her that madness runs in the family and so any child she had with Sam could be similarly afflicted. Whatever will she do.

The slightly spoilerish response to that question is to mention some of the confronting plot elements of the show that had many up in arms when it was first produced... including mental health, promiscuousness, infidelity, abortion, and women with genuine agency.

What's significant about the play

The thing that makes this play standout is the frequent, ubiquitous use of soliloquys... not perhaps used theatrically a lot since the works of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although a mainstay of soap operas some time after the original publication. The thing that makes it interesting, or novel... and even confusing... is that speakers will drift from direct speech to another character, to saying their unspoken thoughts out loud... that we can hear but others on stage cannot.

Something like... "Hello Pedro. That's odd, he didn't look up from his paper when I greeted him just now. Is he cranky with me. I'll try again. I said, Hello Pedro. Oh, this time he looked up. That's a start, but he doesn't appear happy."

It works, partly because it is novel, but probably more because it effectively highlights how the things we say don't necessarily line up with the things we mean. We see this in novels all the time, whether it's a first person narrative, or even the omnipresent narrator, but not so much in plays. And like I said, it does work in this play I found a lot of times where the distinction between what was obviously the internal monolog and the more public vocalisations was not always obvious.

I've said previously and it stands repeating... from the two O'Neill shows I've seen and read so far, I really enjoy his writing style. And I'd say this play is regarded as a masterwork because of it's unique (or at least uncommon) mix of spoken word and monologue, and it's coverage of several themes that were at least partly taboo at the time.

Themes addressed in "Strange Interlude" include grief, loss, insanity., unfaithfulness, the importance of appears., 

So, yes it's good, and yes I liked but... but... 

The problem is...

The length. This is, for my ability to engage and pay attention at least, an abominably long play. Five to six hours. Even the movie production I aw, that completely cut Scene 7 and made other slight and judicious cuts elsewhere only got the play down to three hours. And that would be ok, even 5 or 6 hours would be okay if it remained fresh throughout, but the play does circle through several topics several times over.

I really love Edmund... no I don't, I'm just using him... Hang on, I actually do. Edmund is also on a vacillators frequent flyer program... I need Nina, but I don't love her. Or I do. No I don't. But I do. Likewise Charles... we are just platonic friends, but maybe I want more... don't be silly, it's fine as it is.

So it's probably better to say it's not the length per se, it's the repetition and unresolving of resolved issues, then resolving again and so on.

Belvoir Theatre in Sydney did a version that was 2 hours on the stage with a twenty minute intermission. And there are many other instances of abridged versions. And even though I'm not a fan of tinkering with the playwright's words (go write your own play you lazy sods), I would take a stab and say that the shorter versions are more powerful for the brevity. The frequent shortening of the play speaks to a common concern about the length.

But back to why it's good

One of the things I liked the most is O'Neill's ability to make Nina a sympathetic character despite being flawed. Really flawed. I think Nina and Ibsen's Hedda Gabler may have become good friends. She is at times vindictive towards pretty much everyone in the play, including trying to hurt her son Gordon junior by revealing Sam wasn't his real dad, only for her revelation to fall flat. But she is also a very damaged woman, traumatised by the loss of he first fiance, and then by some of the actions that were to a degree trauma induced.

While the vacillating and prevaricating are a little over done (a by product of the play's length(, a cropped back version of that does an effective job of showing the guilt and internal torture of living with compromised decision making. Less, in this case might have been more.

The version I watched was a 1988 television production based on London staged version three years earlier. This film features Glenda Jackson as Nine (I have to be honest, not a huge fan... would like to see her provide a bit more light to go with her shade), Jose Ferrer as Nina's dad, and a VERY young Kenneth Branagh as a very young Gordon junior. It's not bad. But as mentioned before, even though it's 3 hours and not 6, it does go on a bit and it's a very dry and low-key production. 

My favourite performer was probably Edward Petherbridge, who I can't recall ever seeing before). He was particularly good at nuancing the switch from audible voice to monologue. Also, as a mix of someone standing on the outside looking on whilst also being a sage commentator and advisor to Nina,  his asides helped present the plot points and themes fairly clearly.

Yes, this could work in Goulburn today (s long as it's not too long) and I personally would love to go see it. Directors could have a lot of fun with the frequent monologs... including extracting a bit of occasional comedy as a character splits between the two.

Materials accessed:

"Strange Interlude." - script (1926). Available many places. This can be found many places. Here's a version from Internet Archive.

"Strange Interlude." - movie (1988). Available for free on Youtube.