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.