2/24/2004 08:57:00 AM|||Andrew|||I wanted to exude happiness today over Eugene O'Neill, perhaps the greatest American playwright ever, drawing specific examples from one of his best (and Pulitzer-winning) plays, Long Day's Journey Into Night. I don't feel like searching for a link right now; so you can go look it up yourself if you like.

Besides being a marvelously talented playwright generally, O'Neill was exceptionally diverse. On my bookshelf I have an anthology of some of his plays. To give you some indication of the kind of things he's written, it includes: a play written entirely in the mode of Greek tragedy, complete with chorus and masks and such; a play that includes not only the spoken words of the characters, but also their thoughts (And no, I have No idea how that would work on stage); several plays written entirely in dialect that I can barely understand as it is; and a Civil War version of Aeschylus's great trilogy, the Orestia.

Long Day's Journey Into Night is not in this anthology. In fact it was published (and awarded the Pulitzer) posthumously. It is also, I think, his greatest work. It is full of emotion, of pain, of power. It is an intensely personal play, a glimpse into O'Neill's own family life. In his dedication, O'Neill writes: "Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood." Now that I've got you hooked, let me go into what I think is one of the things that establishes O'Neill's genius: the stage directions.

Most playwrights, historically, never wrote their own stage directions. These were usually added in by the stage manager or director to their working script, then incorporated into any eventually published text. But O'Neill drew of the Swedish writer Strindbergh by taking full control of his stage directions. And what beauty is found there...what power of description and character. Listen.

"Mary is fifty-four, about medium height. She still has a young, graceful figure, a trifle plump, but showing little evidence of middle-aged waist and hips, although she is not tightly corseted. Her face is disctinctly Irish in type. It must once have been extremely pretty, and is still striking. It does not match her healthy figure but is thin and pale with the bone structure prominent. Her nose is long and straight, her mouth wide with full, sensitive lips. She uses no rouge or any sort of make-up. Her high forehead is framed by thick, pure white hair. Accentuated by her pallor and white hair, her dark brown eyes appear black. They are unusually large and beautiful, with black brows and long curling lashes.

"What strikes one immediately is her extreme nervousness. Her hands are never still. They were once beautiful hands, with long, tapering fingers, but rheumatism has knotted the joints and warped the fingers, so that now they have an ugly crippled loook. One avoids looking at them, the more so because one is conscious she is sensitive about their appearance and humiliated by her inability to control the nervousness which draws attention to them.

"She is dressed simply but with a sure sense of what becomes her. Her hair is arranged with fastidious care. Her voice is soft and attractive. When she is merry, there is a touch of Irish lilt in it."

So much is there, so much contained. Already through O'Neill's description the actress, the director, the costumer, and the reader know much about Mary's character, just in this. How helpful this sort of insight into a character to an actress in particular cannot be overemphasized. In any case, read Eugene O'Neill, particularly if you like plays. Ask me for the book if you need to, but read him!

Ok, I'm done exuding happiness over that for now.|||107764184566930243|||