Dear Republic,
It is Overestimated Week at ROL. As you may have noticed, Eugene O’Neill has been sitting pretty for a long, long time as the dean of American theater — but now, at long last, Zelda Knapp knocks him off the pedestal.
-ROL
DECANONIZE O’NEILL!
I hit my breaking point on Thursday, May 12, 2016. It had been a busy year of theater-going for me, and in the past year or so I'd seen several Eugene O'Neill plays, bookended by two of the big tent poles of his oeuvre: first, Brooklyn Academy of Music's five-hour Iceman Cometh starring Nathan Lane; next, Broadway's 75-minute (and yet interminable) Hughie starring Forest Whitaker; and finally, on this fateful Thursday evening in May, I saw Roundabout Theatre's production of the aptly-named Long Day's Journey Into Night. O'Neill's semi-autobiographical play about his morphine-addicted mother spans four very long hours. At around the three-hour mark, with miles to go before I slept, and as the man sitting next to me wept through Gabriel's Byrne's monologue about [... honestly I'd have to google a plot summary to tell you], I was cycling idly through various intrusive thoughts, including but not limited to:
imagining various disaster scenarios (hail breaking through the ceiling was my favorite),
debating if I could pull off a pixie cut (nine years later I am delighted to report that I look adorable with a pixie cut),
contemplating what would happen if I were to tip forward enough to roll down the entire mezzanine and tumble into the orchestra seating below (nine years later I am delighted to report that I didn't test this one).
The next day, I took to every nerd's refuge: my theater blog. I announced my intention to never sit through another Eugene O'Neill play as long as I lived. “Life is too short,” I said, “and O'Neill plays are too long.”
But it's not just that his plays are long (even though they are). It's not just that they're all depressing (even though they are). It's that I can never figure out why we're here. I don't understand why so much of the 20th Century American Theater Canon can be summed up with the two-word question: “Why bother?” We all know the American Dream ain't what it used to be, but why are you spending four hours reminding me? I came of age during 9/11 and its subsequent wars. I spent my thirties living through a very grim decade in American history. I am profoundly aware that our heroes sometimes disappoint us, that life often disappoints us, and that we ourselves can be the biggest disappointment of all.
I'm not on morphine, but I am on antidepressants and I have enough clarity to say that I don't need to spend my life watching miserable people resign themselves to despair. Michael Frayn once wrote, “I haven't come to the theatre to hear about other people's problems. I've come to be taken out of myself and preferably not put back again.” I don't need every show to be Hello, Dolly! (in fact, I'd prefer no show to be Hello, Dolly!, but that's another rant). But I also don't need this. Give me a Tom Stoppard, a Lanford Wilson, a Dominique Morriseau, an Abe Koogler, a Paula Vogel. But don't give me this.
I remember first reading the script to Iceman in high school. I had a big crush on Robert Sean Leonard at the time, and I knew he'd had a supporting role in the 1999 revival (this same knowledge did not lead me to seek out Long Day's Journey, whose 2003 revival also featured his dashing good looks, but what can you do). It was a dense read for a seventeen-year-old who hadn't had the chance to be disillusioned yet, and I kept having to check the list of characters to make sure I could follow the big crowd on the page/stage. And when I finished it, I shrugged and read something else. Probably one of the Fear Street books. (I've really been missing those books. It was a mistake to give them away.)
Anyway, when I finally saw Iceman on the stage in 2015 I was older and Fear Street-less but also a bit strapped for cash so I got a partial view seat to see the show in the historic BAM Harvey Theater. Honestly, I don't think I would have cared for the play even with a view not obstructed by a giant column. The structure of the play is just so damn repetitive. We start with a bar full of dissolutes, all armed with their own self-delusions (the pimp doesn't think he's a pimp, the unemployed embezzler is sure he'll get his job back), which we get to hear one after the other, as if they're standing (well, sitting) in line for their turn. They're all installed like potted plants in a saloon owned by Harry Hope, in case we missed both text and subtext. Then Hickey the traveling salesman shows up, calls them out on their pipe dreams, and generally makes a buoyant nuisance of himself. So of course, they each take their turn leaving the bar to go prove him wrong and seek their fortune. And then—you guessed it—one by one they all return, delusions dissolved, miserable and getting drunker. As I wrote in my review at the time, “most of the characters don't feel like characters—they're cutouts, each reciting their pipe dreams in their turn, then subsiding back into their seats as the next character takes over. The degree of despair and denial is palpable, but that alone is not enough to make it a play.” Because at the end of the day, I don't think this is a well-written piece of theater.
My time behind the column at the BAM Harvey Theater is five hours I'll never get back. And, not content to complain on my blog alone, I also hopped onto Twitter (RIP) to call it The Iceman Cometh and He Bringeth All His Drinking Buddies. A few years later, when the 2018 Broadway revival of Iceman was announced, I would proudly declare, “They can throw all the Denzels at it they want, I'm still not seeing another O'Neill play.”
I can't even tell you what Hughie was about. Wait, I can. It was about 75 minutes long.
I know what you're thinking. “O'Neill's plays have been celebrated for decades! He sits alongside Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams as kings of American Drama! They named a Broadway theater after him! Book of Mormon's been playing there for ages! Book of Mormon, Zelda! Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams don't have Broadway theaters named after them. Come to think of it, neither do you, Zelda!” To which I say, first of all: rude. Second of all, for those who might discount my reaction as too short-lived a distaste for such a long-lived career, I have more receipts. I've been complaining about him online even longer. In 2012, after a spirited debate with a coworker about the Canon, I posted a tiny one-act as a Facebook note (I'd say I'm dating myself, but I've included enough timestamps in here already for you to already know I'm an aging Millennial who spent too much time online in her twenties).
I know you're dying to read it.
“Every Scene in an O'Neill Play (after A Moon for the Misbegotten)”
Character A is onstage, probably drinking or doing opium. Character B enters.
B: I've got a secret and I'm going to be really obvious about it while pretending I don't have a secret.
A: Omigod what is the secret? Will it destroy all my hopes and dreams?
B: Okay, you've dragged it out of me! Here is the secret! Here are all the details of the secret! I will spend half an hour telling you all about the secret, but the REAL secret is that I am lying.
A: Wow, that's pretty bad, but I think I can live with the secret you just told me. My hopes and dreams are intact. I'm still drunk though.
B: Oh, me too. And possibly I love you.
A: Possibly I love you too! Perhaps we can escape this miserable existence together and seek our hopes and dreams!
B: Psyche! Here's the real secret, not the one I told you before. This one is really awful and reveals that we are miserable people who can do nothing but self-destruct in pools of our own sin. I might have killed someone. I often do.
A: Fuck. There go my hopes and dreams. I might kill myself, or I might just sit here and stare into the middle distance, as my hopes and dreams gallop apace far, far away. I think I'll drink some more.
Watch any of his plays and tell me I'm wrong. I'll wait. (It's gonna take a few hours. Bring snacks.)
Zelda Knapp has been published in various journals and books, along with her collection, This Is What They Made It Out Of: tales from the end of the world. www.zeldaknapp.com
 | A guest post by
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I have been fighting myself to not write this. I lost the battle. I’m a writer, but I am not literary. I have written on economics, a little on epistemology, and a little more on ethics. My husband is the literary writer (with a literary sounding name: Lliteras).
As they say, there is no accounting for tastes–yet, we feel compelled to account for them, don’t we? I’m not writing about O’Neill because I want to convince anyone of my opinion. My position is more that of a witness on the stand giving testimony–”I know what the other witness said she saw, your Honor, but I saw the murder from a different perspective.”
I love O’Neill. Not everything he’s ever written. I haven’t seen every play he’s written, nor have I read them all. I’ve never seen a staged version of “A Long Day’s Journey.” I’ve seen the film directed by Sydney Lumet. It has occasionally popped up on TV and all I have to do is hear a bit of dialogue and I’m drawn into it. I hear the lyricism before I hear the words. It’s mesmerizing. If you are one who has said: “Men have trouble expressing their emotions. I wish men would tell me how they really feel”--this play’s for you. These men tell you what it is like to have been an actor, a merchant marine; what it’s like to be an alcoholic, a husband, a father, a brother, a son. Yes, the play has to be well cast and directed, but when it is…magic.
I’ve seen “Hughie” live–in the 1970’s. Too long ago to remember the specifics, but not too long to forget that I liked it. I also saw “Mourning Becomes Electra” on stage--unfortunately not long enough ago to forget. (It was the production, not the play per se.) And I saw “The Hairy Ape” directed by Leon Ingulsrud. I was fortunate enough to see 5 plays directed by Inglusrud. The most exquisite was “Moby Dick” (that he co-wrote) in which he cast a woman as Ahab–no really, it worked! Her performance was powerful. There aren’t enough superlatives. Live performances can be breathtaking in a way film can never be. But “live” is ephemeral. That’s the pity. All I have is words. (Pictures are also inadequate: http://thirdculture.com/leon/works/md(n).html)
Back to “The Hairy Ape.” (https://thirdculture.com/leon/works/ha.html) Do you know what it’s like to work in an engine room on a ship? I don’t. My husband does, but that’s another story. Even he doesn’t know what it’s like to shovel coal to keep the ship afloat. It’s got to be one of the closest things to Hell–the heat, the danger, the monotony, the pain. But this man–O’Neill’s hairy ape of a man–saw himself as the FORCE that made the oceanliner–that marvel of engineering–GO. He had this seemingly undaunted pride in his work–you know, pride in workmanship, that little expendable thing that the culture has been trying to strip from men for decades.
The only version of “The Iceman Cometh” I’ve seen is the American Film Theatre production with Lee Marvin–who was marvelous. And Greta Garbo was captivating in “Anna Christie.” It was her first speaking role. “Garbo speaks.” And when she did–and asked the barkeep for a whiskey–she was transformed from Garbo to some character. She was some woman at a bar, and I wanted to know why she had to have that drink. O’Neill casts a spell on me. I don’t know his source–whether it is sorcery or something more divine. It’s not something I cannot analyze or explain. All I have is words.
(I meant "your article" not "you're article.")