O'Neill, Eugene

Average customer rating:

NO EXIT
The Great American Drama of the 20th Century
American literature at its best
Intensity In Addiction
The ultimate family portrait

Long Day's Journey into Night
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Writing | Reference | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

A Streetcar Named Desire
The Iceman Cometh
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Waiting for Godot: A Tragicomedy in Two Acts
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

ASIN: 0300093055

Amazon.com

This work is interesting enough for its history. Completed in 1940, Long Day's Journey Into Night is an autobiographical play Eugene O'Neill wrote that--because of the highly personal writing about his family--was not to be released until 25 years after his death, which occurred in 1953. But since O'Neill's immediate family had died in the early 1920s, his wife allowed publication of the play in 1956. Besides the history alone, the play is fascinating in its own right. It tells of the "Tyrones"--a fictional name for what is clearly the O'Neills. Theirs is not a happy tale: The youngest son (Edmond) is sent to a sanitarium to recover from tuberculosis; he despises his father for sending him; his mother is wrecked by narcotics; and his older brother by drink. In real-life these factors conspired to turn O'Neill into who he was--a tormented individual and a brilliant playwright.

Book Description

Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical play Long Day's Journey into Night is regarded as his finest work. First published by Yale University Press in 1956, it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and has since sold more than one million copies. This edition, which includes a new foreword by Harold Bloom, coincides with a new production of the play starring Brian Dennehy, which opens in Chicago in January 2002 and in New York in April.

Customer Reviews:

NO EXIT.......2007-06-24

I have written reviews of some of Eugene O'Neill's other plays elsewhere in this space. I have noted there that Iceman Cometh is my favorite for a variety of reasons, some of them political. Journey, however, may be O'Neill best play and not only because it is somewhat autobiographical. The trials and tribulations of a dysfunctional family that is ultimately clueless about solutions to what ails each of the four characters (father, mother and two very unlike sons)is very much the stuff of modern drama. The intervention of the gods would seem out of place here.

In O'Neill hands the tensions, misunderstandings and illusions presented are recognizable to today's audiences, even those who may themselves be troubled about finding solutions to some very disturbing problems. Althought this is a difficult play to read (and more difficult to watch performed)virtually everyone I know who has read and/or watch it has survived to the end. And was glad of it. That will tell as much as anything else that I could add that we are dealing with a master work of American literature. Enough said.

The Great American Drama of the 20th Century.......2007-06-14

I recently re-read "Long Day's Journey into Night" on a vacation flight and was surprised to find how well it stood up in my second reading.

The first time I read the play was when I was in my late teens and I could easily relate to melancholia of Edmund.

With age and time, I am less melancholic and perhaps less Edmund-like but "Long Day's Journey into Night" is a wonderful play. The most personal (autobiographical) of O'Neill's work: it also is his most universal work.

On every page, the American Dream/nightmare comes through with a brilliance perhaps not equaled elsewhere.

If a professional or quality amateur production of this work is not readily available to you, I highly recommend you pick up a copy. Enjoy!

American literature at its best.......2007-05-18

Simply said, the most beautiful American play of all time.

Intensity In Addiction.......2007-03-29

O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey Into Night" is often considered his best work. The book is highly autobiographical and depicts a highly dysfunctional family where the men are all alcoholics and the mother is a morphine addict. The dialogue is truly intense and the stage direction is extremely relevant to the proper mood and attitude of the dialogue.

The most interesting thing about the play is the stigma that is attached to the use of drugs, particularly in comparison to the use of alcohol. Alcohol use and alcoholism is `socially acceptable' whereas the use of narcotics is relegated to prostitutes and others of low social standing. The intensity of the dialogue rests in its ability to illustrate the torment of the family as it tries to deal with the drug addiction of the mother and the horror of the hold it has on her, while all the time, the alcoholism is just taken as routine. The father often comments about how he never "missed a performance" because of his alcohol use and therefore, it was not a problem. But in fact, it is a tremendous problem which they cannot shake, even though they are aware that it is consuming them.

Perhaps most interesting of all is that the play was published posthumously. O'Neill seems to have been able to write it and face the terror of the dysfunctionality in 1940, but he would not allow publication of the play until he was no longer alive. While it was within his grasp to write about the situation, it was not within him to allow the world to see it within his time.

The foreword by Harold Bloom is not surprisingly pedantic and overly academic. Bloom often takes the position that he knows what is appropriate, right and underlying about a written piece, but never assumes that any other person really properly understands what it is all about. He seems to see it as his job to inform others what they do not know; despite other people's potentially valid and illuminating interpretations. The reader may wish to completely skip the forward and go right to the words of O'Neill and make their own interpretation. Truly a marvel of a play, there is no person who would not gain from the reading of this brilliant work of the master playwright of his time.

The ultimate family portrait.......2007-02-08

If one is fortified for a dreary tale, this one is one of the best.

On a nuts and bolts level, it has a credible cast of characters, the plot is self-consistent even as the past is revised by revelations, the story is more than engaging, and the general lessons on humanity can be applied to each of our lives.

I found it not so overwhelmingly dreary. The characters have affection for each other, and express dreams and can recall successes as well as face their current, probably insurmountable problems.

The addition of the background: having an autobiographical basis, published post-humously, from one of the leading American playwrights of his day, should make it required reading for a literate citizen. Frankly, I'm embarrassed I didn't read it until this year, when I'm nearly 50.

Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra

Average customer rating:

Desire Under the Elms
mourning becomes elektra
THREE MASTERPIECES
need some ideas
Three great and rarely performed plays by Eugene O'Neill

Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Art Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Long Day's Journey into Night
Death of a Salesman (Penguin Plays)
The Iceman Cometh
Six Plays by Lillian Hellman
Four Plays by Eugene O'Neill: Anna Christie; The Hairy Ape; The Emperor Jones; Beyond the Horizon

ASIN: 0679763961
Release Date: 1995-10-31

Book Description

These three plays exemplify Eugene O'Neil's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts.

Customer Reviews:

Desire Under the Elms.......2006-08-20

Its the only play i read in the book. It was an interesting read. The dialect is sometimes hard to understand, only a few words though.
The play is fast moving and interesting. The scandalous Eben-???(dont want to ruin it for you) relationship is unexpected and dramatic. Perhaps too dramatic, in a rome and juliet complex.

mourning becomes elektra.......2001-11-10

Oneill, death death death, this is rereleased in vintage 1958,
mourning becomes electra , strange interlude, required reading
for all playwrights of our era.

THREE MASTERPIECES.......2001-02-15

Each of the three plays in this volume are beautiful in their own way, with a poignant message that you'll be the better for hearing. O'Neill's genius is breathtaking and sometimes I wonder how he does it. Out of all his plays, there's not a stinker in the bunch.

need some ideas.......1999-09-28

i need a thesis for a paper on strange interlud

Three great and rarely performed plays by Eugene O'Neill.......1998-11-18

One of these three great plays by Eugene O'Neill is Strange Interlude which was written in 1923 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 when it originally ran on Broadway. Its running time is over four hours and it is usually performed with a dinner break. It is a family chronicle, of sorts, following the life of Nina Leeds and her family in a small university town in New England - from her early days as a young woman mourning the loss of her ideal lover during WWI, through her middle age years. It is the story of a family's secret and their determination to keep this secret unknown by others, and sometimes even to themselves. The play's most unusual quality, though, is found in the words that each character speaks. Not only do they converse with each other using naturalistic dialogue, but they also voice their subtext, which is unheard by the other characters in the play, but is heard by the audience. This device brings to the surface the secret life that each character in the play carries with them but is not willing to reveal to others. It creates, in the audience, as if it were another character in the play, a "sharer" of these stage characters' secrets. Through it all we view the lives of these characters with a fondness, and we root for them. Perhaps we root for them because we know, very much, why they are doing the things they do to each other.

The two other plays are well worth the experience of reading and/or seeing on stage. Mourning Becomes Electra, based on the Greek Electra myth, is especially wonderful. Its set in post civil war america and like Strange Interlude its length makes it a rare theatre treat to see performed on stage.

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1932-1943 (Library of America)
Average customer rating:

always sneering at someone else

America's greatest plywright at his best!

Best American Play Ever Written

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1932-1943 (Library of America)
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Anthologies | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
O'Neill, Eugene | ( O ) | Authors, A-Z | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1920-1931 (Library of America)

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1913-1920 (Library of America)

Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955 (Library of America)

Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1944-1961 (Library of America)

Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America)

ASIN: 094045050X

Book Description

eeeeeeeeeeeee

Customer Reviews:

always sneering at someone else.......2001-02-12

I enjoy this collection of plays from Mr Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953). He is considered the first dramatist from the US and is also the first to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. First, I must write that this edition from the LIBRARY OF AMERICA is beautiful. It has a sewn binding, flexible yet strong binding boards covered with a closely woven, rayon cloth and a ribbon bookmark attached to the spine. This volume covers the period 1932-43, marking Mr O'Neill's most well-known work. My favourites are A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and THE ICEMAN COMETH. I also enjoy the the Irish flavour of A TOUCH OF the POET. ALDJIN is auto-biographical, as is also A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN. ALDJIN benefits from an eye-witness perspective which makes the characters extremely poignant. I feel an eery shiver as I read the drama, knowing the playwright's life. Like his character Edmund, Mr O'Neill left Princeton after his first year; went to sea, searched for gold in South America and haunted the waterfront bars in Buenos Aires, Liverpool and New York. He drank heavily. The other characters reflect his life also. His father was a successful actor who played but one role, the Count of Monte Cristo, and never became a more serious actor. His mother used morphine and his older brother was an alchoholic. All three died between 1920-23. This play is such a vivid "photograph" it sometimes is painfull for me to read, but at the same time a great reward. If you are interested in dramatists from the US, or in gritty, realistic plays about characters on the the margins of society, this collection will be interesting to you.

America's greatest plywright at his best!.......2000-04-21

This collection of work gives the reader O'Neill, America's greatest playwright, at his most powerful. The two earlier collections are likewise great, but this third one contains his two strongest works: "The Iceman Cometh" and "Long Day's Journey Into Night."

In "The Iceman Cometh," O'Neill creates a world of happy derelicts. They spend their nights and days in Harry Hope's saloon, living through today by drinking and believing in the "pipe dreams" of tomorrow. That is until Hickey comes to town. He forces them, for the first time, to look honestly at their lives. This dose of reality has devestating affects on the patrons of Harry's.

Also included is O'Neill's masterpiece, "Long Day's Journey Into Night." This play, not published or produced in his lifetime, painfully tells the story of his own dysfunctional family. The play's action is one calendar day, but O'Neill, through dialogue, takes the reader back to the origins of their problems. The emotions displayed, which include guilt, envy, pain, cynicism, and love, tears the family apart, while strangely holding them together. Even though the emotions run high, O'Neill does it without employing sentimentality. He is honest without becoming melodramatic. A rare accomplish in literature. A more emotionally rendering work would be hard to find.

These two works are not the only jems the collection contains. "A Moon for the Misbegotten," now running on Broadway, continues the story of his brother, Jamie, who appears in "Long Day's Journey . . ." "Ah, Wilderness!" is a fine coming of age story.

The others also bare the mark of O'Neill's genius. The stories, set in the first half of the twentieth century, are as true today as they were when written. They've persevered and have proven timeless. His characters live with the reader long after the work is finished. And many are well worth a second visit.

Best American Play Ever Written.......1997-11-08

Long Day's Journey Into Night is O'Neill's autobiographical dichotomization of his dysfunctional family. I also happens to be one of the best plays ever written. One would not expect the author to be impartial toward his past or his family: he is either strongly libelous or fondly empathetic. What O'Neill accomplishes is a Golden Mean, it is written with so much integrity, so much compasion and with so much devastating truth that it becomes one of the most emotionally- challenging literary works one is ever likely to read. The four Tyrones' characterization is as broadly affecting as life itself: Jamie, a cynic ruined by dissipation; Mary, one of the best tragic heroines ever created; Edmund, O'Neill's tortured alter-ego; James, an epitomy of the Irish-American presence in US and their blind faith and peculiraly ambivalent optimism. The play is in four acts and it is brillintly crafted; it has all the urgency of a social outcry and all the emotional strength of an epic. O'Neill wrote," God grant me sympathy for the haunted Tyrones." He does sympathize with these people, of course, but he is also soberly realistic: his heroes will forever remain thwarted by the vicious circle of their multi-faceted inadequacy.

The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog

Average customer rating:

comfort
Great book for people who have lost a dog
The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog
The Last Will and testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog
The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog

The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Henry Holt and Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Animal Care & Pets | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Home & Garden Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Old Dogs Remembered
Goodbye, Friend: Healing Wisdom for Anyone Who Has Ever Lost a Pet
Blessing the Bridge: What Animals Teach Us About Death, Dying, and Beyond
A Dog's Life
Saying Good-Bye to the Pet You Love: A Complete Resource to Help You Heal

ASIN: 0805061703

Book Description

The perfect gift for every dog owner.In the early 1940s, famed playwright Eugene O'Neill wrote a moving piece of prose about his dog, Silverdene Emblem O'Neill (Blemie). In The Last Will and Testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog, O'Neill eloquently and compassionately articulates what all dog owners feel as their pet nears the of its life. O'Neill's elegy has been lovingly restored to print and is beautifully illustrated by the award-winning quilt maker Adrienne Yorinks. Yorinks complements the text using twenty-five machine-pieced and hand-stitched quilts with color photographic transfers of dogs. The Last Will says everything that needs to be said to someone you love who is losing or has lost a beloved canine friend.

Customer Reviews:

comfort.......2007-05-13

I have sent this little book to dear friends who have recently suffered the loss of a canine family member. They have told me that this little book has brought them tremendous comfort at a very difficult time.

Great book for people who have lost a dog.......2007-02-21

This dog is a great read for people who have suffered the loss of a dog. I have given it to many people and they have all appreciated it.

The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog.......2006-08-06

A wonderful little book designed to help the owner of a newly

The Last Will and testament of an Extremely Distinguished Dog.......2006-07-23

Amazing, a must for anyone who has lost their beloved dog....

The Last Will & Testament of a Very Distinguished Dog.......2006-02-01

A treasure of a book for the dog lover dealing with the sadness of loss. Read it or give it to a friend. You will be doing a good deed.

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1920-1931 (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

Classics Revisited

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1920-1931 (Library of America)
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1932-1943 (Library of America)
Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1913-1920 (Library of America)
Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955 (Library of America)
Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America)
Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1944-1961 (Library of America)

ASIN: 0940450496

Customer Reviews:

Classics Revisited.......2000-08-14

This exquisite collection of Eugene O'Neill's later works is worth the beautifully bound edition from the Library of America. Including some of the most enduring examples of american playwrighting excellence and some little-known gems, this collection is a must-have for the serious theater fan, theater student and certainly theatrical producers. Since last year's Tony award-winning revival of "The Iceman Cometh" and this year's "Moon for the Misbegotten" have been such successes in New York, O'Neill's most personal plays are suddenly current again. This volume edited by Travis Bogard is the perfection addition to any collection, when coupled with the equally stunning volume of O'Neill's earlier work "Eugene O'Neill:Complete Plays 1913-1920."

Average customer rating:

Alcohol, blackmail, regrets, and loss--and in the center of it all, an unlikely couple
A Beautiful Love Story That Wraps Around Your Heart
Even though my Dad designed recent production,I LOVED IT!
RE: Discovery
The American play at its best

A Moon for the Misbegotten
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Art Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Long Day's Journey into Night
The Iceman Cometh
Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

ASIN: 0300118155

Book Description

Eugene O’Neill’s last completed play, A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sequel to his autobiographical Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Moon picks up eleven years after the events described in Long Day’s Journey Into Night, as Jim Tyrone (based on O’Neill’s older brother Jamie) grasps at a last chance at love under the full moonlight. This paperback edition features an insightful introduction by Stephen A. Black, helpful to anyone who desires a deeper understanding of O’Neill’s work.

Customer Reviews:

Alcohol, blackmail, regrets, and loss--and in the center of it all, an unlikely couple.......2006-12-16

O'Neill's "last" play, written and revised several times concurrently with his other four late plays, never made it to Broadway during his lifetime. After a lukewarmly received tour through the Midwest, O'Neill became dissatisfied with the production, in part because he was increasingly in poor health and also because he was never happy with the play to begin with. He finally gave up on the work, and published it with a curt, apologetic prefatory note, saying "I cannot presently give it the attention required for appropriate presentation."

In spite of its inauspicious beginnings, many consider it his greatest work. I reserve that laurel for "Long Day's Journey," but of all O'Neill's works, this one reads as well on the page as it looks on the stage. Its lead character, James Tyrone, is a thinly disguised version of O'Neill's brother, who drank himself to death in a sanatorium the year after their mother died. O'Neill resurrects his brother for the theater and throws him drunkenly into the arms of an impossible match: Josie Hogan, the daughter of a tenant living on land he inherited. She is, perhaps, O'Neill's most fully fleshed female lead--literally and figuratively. Strong-willed and strong-armed, she simultaneously flaunts and scorns her reputation as a "terrible wanton woman" (an image that is more invented than real), but it is immediately obvious that her true love is Tyrone himself.

The plot of the play rests on a swindle planned by Josie and her father, who mistakenly believe that Tyrone plans to sell their land to an insufferably pampered blueblood from the neighborhood. Their attempt at conning Tyrone with alcohol and blackmail, which resembles a tawdry version of every outrageous scheme concocted by Lucy Ricardo, quickly misfires as a half-comic caper that brings to all concerned a melancholy (but not exactly tragic) sense of loss and wistfulness.

You can see O'Neill struggling to redeem the brother he loved but never quite understood or forgave. But it is Josie who ultimately wins the audience's affections and sympathy.

A Beautiful Love Story That Wraps Around Your Heart.......2001-01-29

I saw the play on Broadway back in May 2000. If Eugene O'Neill's ghost were walking the aisles of the theater that night he would be proud of the performance that night. The play is timeless as it is cherished as the best love story created. The actors were superb in their portrayal of O'Neill's character. Gabriel Byrne was excellent in his role as James Tyrone the sometimes actor, full time drunken landlord of Phil Hogan (played by Roy Dotrice) and Josie Hogan (played by Cherry Jones). Cherry Jones' character Josie brought out a beautiful heart of a hulking frame of a woman with a reputation of being ornery like her father, who longs for the man she loves, James Tyrone. Every moment is the ebb tide of emotion stirring in the hearts of the two misbegotten crossed lovers. Even to the very end, of the misfortunate disappointment it will stop your heart and make you take a deeper breath again.

Even though my Dad designed recent production,I LOVED IT!.......2000-10-11

I loved this play the first second i saw it on broadway. it gave me vibrations all over my body every time Cherry Jones said a line. It was an amazing story of true love and to give yourself over to someyone. And talking to Hope Davis made me cry after, because she said to me "I've never seen love so strong." I do hope you give Eugene O'Neill a chance and buy this amazing play. And try to see any production of his work being broadway or smaller productions. Thank you!

RE: Discovery.......2000-08-20

Sometimes plays are rediscovered after what seems to be utter failure, a valuable insight for all, I think. O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten was rejected by pre-Broadway audiences in Michigan and Ohio in the 1940s, effectively preventing the play from having a New York premiere during the author's lifetime. In each of the following two decades, attempts at New York productions failed. It took Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst to ignite the play for New York in the 1970s, under the direction of the legendary Jose Quintero.

O'Neill's playwriting career is oddly similar to that of Sam Shepard: He had an early series of realistic short plays, followed by a period of experiment, when he explored a variety of artistic impulses and writing styles. Eventually, he wrote a handful of plays, rooted in realism, sometimes autobiographical, which revealed, nevertheless, what he'd learned through experiment. In the best of these, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, O'Neill built vehicles of immense emotional power with psychologically rich characters and fairly organic plots.

MOON revolves around the Irish-American earth mother, Josie Hogan, a tall, rough-hewn woman, who promotes a course image of herself to cover a fragile and vulnerable interior. The other two "imposters" of the play are her father, Phil Hogan, and the landlord of their tired Connecticut farm, James Tyrone (based on O'Neill's brother), a third-rate Broadway actor, who has drunk his life away, chasing loose women and acting a fool. Nevertheless, Josie secretly harbors feelings for him. The play hinges on what happens when her father, through a clever, inebriated deception, convinces her to blackmail Tyrone into selling them the farm rather than selling it to their rich, obnoxious neighbor (for a much higher price). The subterfuge leads to one of the most poignant love scenes in American dramatic literature, as Josie and Jim Tyrone discover that they know and understand the person beneath the mask better than they each thought, and it's still not enough to unite them.

O'Neill's original title for the play was The Moon Bore Twins. We can be grateful for the change, though the original title does carry a measure of insight with it, for Josie and Tyrone are, if not identical twins psychologically, at least inversions of the same chord-doomed to occupy separate, mutually exclusive worlds.

The play contains an amazing shift of tone from the first half to the last half. In act one and two we are treated to a rather comic display of Irish inflected patter between Josie, her father, and the rest of the five characters. In the last two acts, the tone becomes more serious and bittersweet, which may explain why it took so long for audiences to catch up with it. The play definitely catches the viewer or reader off guard ... wishing that these two ne'er-do-wells could save each other from the future they have each envisioned. O'Neill's revised title says a lot about the play, for Moon is not as dark as Long Day's Journey, nor as demanding as Iceman, but it is O'Neill deploying all his gifts as a dramatist, writing fully realized roles containing emotional power, wit, humor, and pathos. His language reflects people who are driven to speak to stay alive. No one is writing like this today, except perhaps August Wilson.

The American play at its best.......2000-08-03

Eugene O'Neill is definitely one of the greatest playwrights of all time. I saw Long Days Journey Into Night a few years ago and was just struck by the true dysfunctional family that hearkens to society of today.

Moon takes a character from that great play, James Tyrone, Jr, (who incidentally is O'Neill's brother -- the entire play is autobiographical in nature) and draws readers into the tragic world of the Hogans, and Tyrone. The raw emotions of the characters become apparent with the read -- a difficult thing to do for readers if they have not seen the play -- and also is startling honest about how jealousy, fear and desperation all meld into one.

Definitely a must read, if you want to consider yourself in the know of American literature, but Moon does at times seem trying, with blatant symbolism(the moon is quite noticeable throughout the play) scratching at the reader.

The Iceman Cometh
Average customer rating:

Depressing in a good way

THE DREAMS COMETH

Lying to Live

Curing "a few harmless pipe dreams" with a convert's missionary zeal

A Great Play!

The Iceman Cometh
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Vintage
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
General | Theater | Performing Arts | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books
Look Inside Art Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Look Inside Fiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Long Day's Journey into Night

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra

A Moon for the Misbegotten

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

ASIN: 0375709177
Release Date: 1999-12-07

Book Description

"Spellbinding--soaring theater--. For reasons that remain mysterious, it seems especially moving today."--The New York Times

Eugene O'Neill mined the tragedies of his own life for this depiction of a seedy, skid row saloon in 1912, peopled by society's failures: worn-out anarchists, failed con artists, drifters, whores, pimps, and informers. The pipe-dreaming drunks of Harry Hope's bar numb themselves with rotgut gin and make grandiose plans, while waiting for the annual appearance of the big-spending, fast-talking salesman, Hickey. But this year's visit fails to bring the expected good times, as a changed Hickey tries to rouse the barflies from their soothing stupor with a proselytizing message of salvation through self-knowledge.

Considered by many to be the Nobel Prize-winning playwright's finest work, The Iceman Cometh exposes the human need for illusion as an antidote to despair. The recent gripping, critically acclaimed Broadway production, starring Kevin Spacey, has highlighted anew the subversive genius of O'Neill's play.

Customer Reviews:

Depressing in a good way.......2007-06-15

Being a person who doesn't read a ton of plays, I enjoyed Iceman very much. Focusing around a bar full of broken dreams and dreamers in Manhattan, O'Neill's dark classic tells a story that is really present in most people - that of living off of dreams but never following them with actions.

Interestingly, though, the story goes without resolution in a clear way, allowing the readers (or viewers) to decide for themselves whether the characters "pipe dreams," and their own, are worth persuing, or simply worth dreaming about.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this play is the cast or characters. Ranging from war veterans to anarchists to travelling salesmen, an eclectic cast to find in the same room at any time, it is fascinating to watch each and every characters sets of values completely break on from act I to act IV. This is particularly relevent in regards to the anarchist tramp, Hugo, and his desire to drink wine under the willow trees.

THE DREAMS COMETH.......2007-06-07

The dreams (and illusions) of the very wretched of the earth are different from those of you and I. Or are they? This is the true subject matter of Eugene O'Neill fine play. Very little action, lots of drinking, lots of dreaming, lots philosophizing by the bedraggled cast of characters in a low down gin mill to boot do not sound like the makings of a great American play. But they are. The narrowly focused story line turns into a microcosm of the underside of American society in the early part of the 20th century. These are not the `robber barons' of historic fame but the jetsam of the early stages of industrial society. These are the ones that cannot cope, for one reason or another, with the new ways and seek solace and comfort in the back streets of urban society. For lack of a better word these are what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat. Not Jean Genet's hardened rough and ready sailors, pimps and male prostitutes but on the margins nevertheless. In neither case will they will not make the revolution. But the have their dreams too and O'Neill is there to chronicle them.

Between shots of whiskey the denizens of this small world exhibit all the emotions, contradictions, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of life that the rest of us `normals' have to face. Except, for dramatic effect, these flophouse devotees get their noses rubbed in it by one Harry Hickey- traveling salesman and sport- formerly chief denizen of the `resort' who now has gotten `religion' and wants to spread his newfound `glad tidings'. Spare us from the Hickeys of the world-a little dreaminess and a couple of illusions never hurt anyone. Did they? Although in O'Neill's hands the dialogue is a little stilted and the characters are a little stereotyped (the seemingly obligatory house philosopher, renegade anarchist, token immigrant, day workers, runaway with a hidden past, Irish cop and floosies) and wooden the point he is trying to make gets across just fine. This is a must read on your American drama list.

Lying to Live.......2006-12-13

O'Neill's intense play, The Iceman Cometh, is a character-driven philosophical rumination upon the entwined nature of hope and self-deception. To participate in forgetfulness, it seems, we must be willing to indulge our lies and those of our pals. If we do this perhaps we can enjoy the moment with a laugh, a tease, and another free drink: some of the ways of reaching deep into ourselves and thumbing our noses at the rage and guilt that fuel us...and perhaps the only way to stay sane.

The characters are memorable, archetypes abound: we have the old philosopher and his eager student (who reminds Hicky so much of himself), the general, the captain, the white/black gambler, the pimp, the revolutionary, the whore, Jimmy Tomorrow, and that last curse of Pandora's box, Hope; in this case Harry Hope. These deadbeats and washouts live off of Hope--literally--without his generosity we couldn't imagine them lasting long, out in the cold. We're continously brought back to love and freedom: why does love always prevent freedom here?

All the characters are hopelessly stuck, having given up on life completely and existing only by grace of their pipe dreams--the various ways they've conjured up past or future glory, finding meaning anywhere but here, anytime but now. Good naturedly, they tease each other but each knows that his existence continues only by virtue of his fellow drunks.

Once a year they are treated to the attentions and generosity of their wayward friend, Hicky, an always-on-the-move salesman and born psychologist gifted with the ability to size a person up, play to his vanities, and procure a sale as gratitude. Hicky indulges himself in this periodical binge, eager and happy to become what he really is, a lover of drinks and drunkenness, teases and jokes. But this year, as Hope turns old, something is amiss. Hicky's late and when he finally shows up he seems a good natured, if bad mannered, Messiah convinced it's his duty to wake his old pals to reality. He wants them to admit and then relinquish their lies and pipe dreams. With a wink he jabs them in the heart, seeing right through all their clever dreams. If they'll do what he's done, as he commands, then they'll enjoy the peace and contentment that he's found on the other side of lies and drunkenness. Hicky's motivations are mysterious but we're given more and more clues to the awful deed that sparked his transformation into the sober minded, lie eschewing prophet that he's become. We also learn that behind his peace and contentment is a sort of mad dog rage and self repudiation that allows him to see through everyone and everything, including his own sorry self. Though he wants nothing more than to help, at the end he realizes his mistake as all his friends are now unhappy and incapable of becoming drunk, so he permits his pals to write him off and return to their drunken pipe dreams.

As an exercise for the imagination, it's interesting to replace Hicky with Nietzsche (Theo-dore Hick-Man from Hick-town, son of a minister), his all loving, all forgiving wife with God (Evelyn, Elevyn, Y-elevn?, J.C.), the world renouncing philosopher who awaits death with Schopenhauer, and Hope with, well, hope. Doing so makes The Iceman Cometh an especially Nietzschean play, something like... Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

The film with Lee Marvin as Hicky is quite good, now I'd like to see the Kevin Spacey version.

Curing "a few harmless pipe dreams" with a convert's missionary zeal.......2006-02-14

Although O'Neill finished "The Iceman Cometh" in 1940, he postponed production until after the war, when it enjoyed a run of 136 performances in 1946 after receiving mixed reviews. Three years after O'Neill's death, Jason Robards starred in a revival, resuscitating the play and launching his own career as O'Neill's master interpreter. In the half century since, it has gained somewhat in stature, and some drama critics and theatergoers consider it his best work.

There's not much of a plot and there is little in the way of action. A throng of professional drunks and dreamers crowd the seedy bar in a flophouse that is also home to many of the patrons. The more notable characters are Larry Slade, the cynical priest-figure who subjects the "pipe dreams" of the bar's denizens to a weary scrutiny; Rocky Pioggi, a bartender and a tough who doubles as a pimp to a pair of floozies; Don Parritt, a newcomer who (we soon learn) has ratted out his own mother, an anarchist who used to be Slade's lover; and Harry Hope, the club's ornery proprietor, who is preparing to celebrate his birthday.

They, and nearly a dozen other patrons, await the arrival of Hickey, a traveling salesman who occasionally goes on a bender, but always appears before Hope's birthday to get the festivities rolling and fuel the party with the bounty of his recent earnings. This year, Hickey is late--and the club's denizens will eventually find out why. And, unlike his appearance in previous years, Hickey's presence has the effect of choking the life out of the party. An apparently reformed man, he's on a mission, a reformed zealot who intends to rescue his fellow debauchers from their own escapist fantasies: For years, the residents have been "keep[ing] up the appearance of life with a few harmless pipe dreams about their yesterdays and tomorrows." Yet there's no chance of breaking the inertia as long as they are rooted to their barstools, and Hickey's cure is to hector each of them until they put up or shut up. (O'Neill featured similar themes and the same saloon setting, focusing on one of the play's minor characters and containing a similar ending, in "Tomorrow," his only published short story, which appeared three decades earlier, in 1917.)

O'Neill masterfully fleshes out the lead characters, avoiding the melodramatic flourishes that pepper his earlier work and employing a fine ear for barroom dialect and drivel. The play's weakness (and on this, others certainly disagree with me) is with the Greek chorus of New York City stereotypes of assorted immigrants and lowlifes: the Irish police lieutenant, the French anarchist editor, the British infantry captain, the streetwalkers, and so on--all of whom have fallen to the bottom of the barrel through the neck of a bottle. On the one hand, the cumulative effect of these portraits conveys the warm and oddly comforting camaraderie that survives the depressing hopelessness of these dilapidated lives and their delusional hopes. On the other hand (in both performance and while reading), it's hard to tell these scoundrels apart, they rarely rise above type, and none of them serve as much more than subjects for Hickey's ostensibly altruistic mission and of Slade's self-centered cynicism.

Because of its demands on the actors, this play (four hours long) can be insufferable in amateur hands, and you'll want to read it simply to get an inkling of what you should have seen. Even if you're fortunate enough to enjoy a well-done production, it's worth reading the original text because O'Neill's detailed stage directions and character descriptions add much more than can be shown on a stage. Although O'Neill's fans may disagree on whether "The Iceman Cometh" is his best, it's certainly among his most powerful.

A Great Play!.......2005-05-03

I couldn't put this play down when I read it, and then I was so interested in it I watched all four hours of the 1973 film version! It's hard to believe the play takes place so early in the twentieth century when its relevance has not diminished. It is a stunning portrait of addiction and the self-deception that so often accompanies it. It's tragic, but it's also hilarious in many parts. I don't think you will ever forget the characters, they're so colorful and interesting. It's like Long Day's Journey into night, but far more fun. (Ok, that's not saying much, but this IS actually a lot of fun! All the depressing drunkenness of Long Day's Journey, but lots of laughs, too!)

Average customer rating:

A Moon for the Misbegotten
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Random House
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000KP8K8Y

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1913-1920 (Library of America)

Average customer rating:

The development of a writer

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1913-1920 (Library of America)
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Library of America
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1920-1931 (Library of America)
Eugene O'Neill : Complete Plays 1932-1943 (Library of America)
Tennessee Williams: Plays 1937-1955 (Library of America)
Tennessee Williams: Plays 1957-1980 (Library of America)
Arthur Miller: Collected Plays 1944-1961 (Library of America)

ASIN: 0940450488

Customer Reviews:

The development of a writer.......2000-02-22

This is a tremendous source work, providing a sequential study of O'Neill's development as a dramatist. While not all of the plays are particularly successful, they reveal themes and settings that would provide the foundation for the later O'Neill masterworks. And there are many wonderful early dramas, such as the four S.S. Glencairn plays, his first broadway success "Beyond the Horizon," and the daring "Anna Christie," all of which tested and expanded the dramatic form in America. A wonderful collection!

Average customer rating:

The Great American Dramatic Voice of the 20th Century

Nine Plays (Modern Library)
Eugene O'Neill
Manufacturer: Modern Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

United States | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Drama | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books
ASIN: 0679600450
Release Date: 1993-02-09

Customer Reviews:

The Great American Dramatic Voice of the 20th Century.......2004-03-16

Most moderns tend to think of Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) as a great realistic playwright on the basis of such remarkable works as Long Day's Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh, and Moon for the Misbegotten. It may therefore come as shock to realize that O'Neill actually won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936--long before any of these titles were staged, much less published.

O'Neill began writing poetry at an early age but soon turned to drama. By 1916 he began to make a reputation with The Provincetown Players, and in 1917 had several one acts produced by New York City's Playwright's Theatre. His leap to fame came in 1920 and 1921, when his plays Beyond the Horizon and Anna Christie won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes. He would reign on the New York stage as the great American playwright of serious drama throughout the 1920s.

But in the early 1930s O'Neill--who struggled against poor health, alcoholism, and a host of private demons--became reclusive and fell silent. By the time of his 1936 Nobel Prize most critics assumed he had written himself out, burned out, that his career was over. NINE PLAYS, with an introduction by Joseph Wood Krutch, was first published by Modern Library in 1941--at which time O'Neill had not offered material for either publication or production for close to a decade. In a very real sense, the public and very likely O'Neill himself considered this volume a "summing up" at the end of a distinguished career.

The titles included in NINE PLAYS were selected by O'Neill himself as representative of his work, and in an extremely brief note he indicates that his selection was based both on personal preference and critical response. The titles collected here are: The Emperor Jones, 1920; The Hairy Ape, 1921; All God's Chillun Got Wings, 1923; Desire Under the Elms, 1924; Marco Millions, 1923-1925; The Great God Brown, 1925; Lazarus Laughed, 1925-1926; Strange Interlude, 1926-1927; and Mourning Becomes Electra, 1929-1931.

The selection is interesting in a number of ways. Although O'Neill first made his reputation with realistic drama, virtually every title included here is "experimental" in some form or fashion. True enough, critics of the era fell over themselves to describe O'Neill's work with various "isms"--expressionism and naturalism among them--but in a general sense the titles here are intensely theatrical in nature, and they all broke with then-popular notions of what a play ought to be like.

The Emperor Jones contains remarkably little dialogue at all. All God's Chillun Got Wings challenges racial notions through a then-shocking tale of a love between a black man and a white woman--a subject truly taboo at the time. Desire Under the Elms seems to be realistic in tone, but in terms of visuals it is anything but. Characters literally put on and take off masks in The Great God Brown and action grinds to a halt while they speak directly to the audience in the lengthy Strange Interlude. And then there is Mourning Becomes Electra, a mixture of symbolism and melodrama that actually requires three nights to perform.

Also interesting is the fact that O'Neill includes two titles that were absolute disasters when they appeared on stage: Marco Millions and Lazarus Laughed, both of which might be described as pageant-like dramas that include choral readings in direct echo of ancient Greek dramatic forms. Clearly, O'Neill did not intend NINE PLAYS to be a sort of literary "greatest hits"--the very popular Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie, and Ah! Wilderness are conspicuous by their absence--and at the time this volume was first published considered his more experimental work of more significance.

Casual readers will likely find O'Neill a challenge. On the page, his dialogue has an unnatural quality that doesn't exist in actual performance--but at the same time it is often extremely difficult to envision how an O'Neill script plays, how it actually lives when it is "on its feet" in front of an audience. Consequently, I do not really recommend anything by O'Neill to someone who hasn't seen much theatre or who is unaccustomed to reading playscripts. I think such readers will find it too much of leap to be enjoyable. But if you are a play reader or playgoer, you will likely find him a very rewarding experience.

Fortunately, O'Neill began to write seriously once more in the 1940s, and if anything the power of his final works is even greater than those of his earlier ones, with the posthumous 1956 Pulitzer Prize-winning Long Day's Journey Into Night considered his great masterpiece. If you are looking for an overall O'Neill collection with scholarly annotations, you would really do better with the exceptional three volume Library of America collection, which covers virtually every play he wrote from 1913 to 1943--but this less expensive volume would serve as an excellent introduction for those who aren't quite ready to make such a serious financial or academic investment. For no matter how it is published, Eugene O'Neill is still Eugene O'Neill: the great American dramatic voice of the 20th Century.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Authors:

Authors

Authors