Labyrinth of Hybridities: Avatars of O'Neillian Realism in Multi-ethnic American Drama (1972-2003) (review)

Marc Maufort combines close readings of forty-one plays with examinations of Asian and Western cultural motifs in his careful investigation of Eugene O'Neill's influence on multi-ethnic contemporary American playwrights. The author brings critical attention to American playwrights of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds, including George Wolfe, José Rivera, and Diane Glancy, while exposing O'Neillian thematic concerns in the works of such better-known dramatists as Suzan-Lori Parks, August Wilson, and David Henry Hwang. Specifically, Maufort traces O'Neill's treatment of otherness, intrafamily rivalry, and identity formation in works as divergent as Annette Arkeketa's Ghost Dance and Chay Yew's A Language of Their Own. His analysis focuses on how these contemporary playwrights incorporate O'Neillian thematic motifs and stylistic concerns, including a critique of the American dream and the importance of illusions and "pipe dreams." The book is divided into one chapter each on the plays of African American, Latino, Native American, and Asian American dramatists, and each chapter is further divided into sections that treat a total of sixteen dramatists and their works. While a discussion of forty-one plays may seem an overly ambitious project that would result in an underdeveloped treatment of each work, the author adeptly focuses on how O'Neill's influences are evident in each.

As an Irish American, O'Neill himself was an ethnic "other" much like August Wilson, Nilo Cruz, Hanay Geiogamah, and William Yellow Robe, to name a few of the playwrights treated in the book. Although O'Neill's works are certainly not the only ones to influence contemporary American dramatists, Maufort argues that because of his otherness, O'Neill crafted plays in which identity formation and family relationships are paramount and that these issues are essential to the works under consideration. Just as O'Neill did, the multi-ethnic playwrights discussed in Labyrinth bring varying styles of realism to the fore, including magic realism and expressionist realism. These divergent realistic styles, Maufort argues, reflect each playwright's distinctive approach to representing ethnicity, as each brings to the stage cultural concerns unique to his or her experience while combining those concerns with broader American motifs of racism, materialism, and multiculturalism.

In his first chapter, "Interpreting the Twilight: Hybridizations of Realism in Recent African American Drama," Maufort incorporates a theoretical framework based on the postcolonial theories of Homi Bhabha. Maufort mentions these theories at the opening of the chapter, and although he barely treats them, he uses Bhabha's ideas to show the reader that otherness is among the paramount concerns for African American dramatists. In particular, the author argues that playwrights including Wilson "have articulated the hybrid plight of the African American 'other,' caught up between its African cultural heritage and American materialism" (33). These playwrights' works are reflections of themselves in the sense that they are living hybridizations of African and American cultures. This mix is reflected in their plays stylistically through their hybridizations of realistic and unrealistic mimesis in a way that treats O'Neillian concerns about alienation and the fractures in a family or community.

In the book's third chapter, "'Truth Is What We Hear in Our Stories': Reinventing Realism in First Nations Drama," the author focuses on how Native American dramatists employ O'Neill's common themes of doubtful identity and loss of belonging within close-knit families or communities. Maufort argues that these playwrights critique American materialism as an obstacle to their characters' happiness. The most interesting points of the chapter lie in the author's discussion of embedded performance, metatheater, intertextuality, and traditional ritual and stories as they appear in such plays as Spiderwoman's Sun Moon and Feather, in which otherness is embraced as a source of empowerment.

Maufort takes it for granted that O'Neill's works are essentially realist but concedes that his use of the term is inclusive of...