Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953)

Don't read this play if you or your family have a history of drug addiction and/or alcoholism and you don't want to be reminded of it. This play is about the disintegration of a family whose members are, variously, addicted to drugs or alcohol; tormented by the failure of their dreams; or dying from disease on top of the other problems.

That said...this is a fascinating play with a explosive end. The first three acts are so quiet in comparison, in their depiction of the Tyrone family's show more individual miseries, that I was caught off guard and astonished by the end of Act IV.
I liked the play well enough after the first three acts, but I think I was vaguely disappointed and bored by the family members' endless tiptoeing around the sources of their misery and shifting back and forth between sniping at each other and trying to pretend nothing is wrong.

Everyone who reads about this play knows it is autobiographical, with the Tyrones representing Eugene O'Neill's family and the protagonist Edmund Tyrone representing Eugene O'Neill himself. With Eugene O'Neill being a famous playwright, you might think Edmund is the most interesting character; but I say no, not really. I find his older brother Jamie more complex and therefore more interesting. I'm not entirely sure why yet--I want to study Jamie more closely--but I think it has to do with the difference in Jamie's condition from Edmund's and Mary's. Jamie is a heavy drinker and possibly an alcoholic, but not terminally ill like Edmund or a drug addict like Mary. And since Jamie is out of favor with his father (who considers him a ne'er-do-well) and is receiving less attention because he's not dying, he is more distant from his family and often acts as a cynical observer. At the end, he seems the most emotionally tormented member of the family, certainly more tormented than Edmund. show less

Story as Old as Time

Universally themed dramas retain their force and impact years after they first appear as they reflect the core emotions and thinking of each generation that see and read them. These themes reach across time and nationalities because they tackle what seem to be intractable issues. Such is the case with Eugene O’Neill’s nearly one hundred year old play The Hairy Ape. In modern terms, readers and audiences can focus in four important aspects of the play reflecting issues show more we struggle with today: the one percent vs. everybody else (top deck vs. stokehold), the meaningfulness of work (the pride of Yank), the expression of masculinity (Yank’s strength), and our place in the world (Yank’s existential quandary).

The play opens in the stokehole of an ocean liner, where workmen feed the furnace while they banter crudely among themselves. In particular one, Yank, talks about this strength and the fact that he and his companions are what power the ship, the force, if you will, that moves the world. Yank is confident, strong, prideful, and superior to those around him.

Then from above deck Mildred, daughter of the Steel Trust tycoon, who has just told her aunt of her interest in social work, descends into the stokehold. Upon seeing the men and Yank, she calls them and him filthy beasts, Yank a hairy ape, and faints. Afterwards, Yank rages and seems to be battling with the incident as an existential experience.

Three weeks later, after returning to the New York port, Yank still struggles with his encounter with Mildred and his anger. On Fifth Avenue, he accosts churchgoers, punching one of them. He lands in jail for 30 days, there encountering prisoners who tell him about the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies). Upon release, he seeks them out, but they reject him because of his violent proclamations, especially his wish to blow up the Steel Trust run by Mildred’s father.

Next, he visits the zoo, where he encounters a caged ape, explains that they are seen as one and the same. He releases the ape. The ape attacks him and tosses him in the cage. Before dying, Yank utters these words: “He got me, aw right. I'm trou. Even him didn't tink I belonged.”

Not only does The Hairy Ape demonstrate there’s nothing much new in 21st angst, but stripped of its setting, reimagined in our own lives, it mirrors and explains the frustration felt by many today. It’s a story that’s been retold many times since and some might say acted out in the politics of our day. show less

It had been so long that nothing could blow my mind the way this play did! And I regret putting it off for some time! Long Day's Journey into Night somehow reminded me of Salinger's Franny and Zooey, the picture of a family who hopelessly struggle to find their lost self. And the fact about these two works is that you won't find any sense in them, if you never shared the same kind of desperation.

O'Neill's brilliance and his place as America's foremost playwright locks into place, if it hadn't already, with this third volume of plays from the last decade of his writing life. Three of the plays presented here (The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten) are utter masterpieces, works of art so powerful that they rank among the great accomplishments in English letters. Two other plays (Ah, Wilderness! and A Touch of the Poet) are great plays. A show more third (More Stately Mansions) is the one great failure of O'Neill's career, I believe, an endless epic back-and-forth set of soulful arguments that could have been (and sometimes was) better played in an infinitely shorter play. But it's my belief that no American playwright has ever come within miles of capturing O'Neill's ability to see the pain at the heart of human beings and to encapsulate so perfectly the pity which the lost heart yearns for and requires. show less