Foreword

Performance Reviews

As always, the classics from Eugene O’Neill’s canon were well represented in 2013, with productions of Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Germinal Stage in Denver, at the Kansas City Actor’s Theatre, and the Citadel Theater in Alberta, Canada. The Iceman Cometh was produced at Ensemble Theater, Cleveland, as part of the company’s extended exploration of O’Neill’s plays (they have announced a production of Beyond the Horizon in early 2014). Strange Interlude was at the National Theatre in London with Anne-Marie Duff in a widely acclaimed performance as Nina Leeds. The Hairy Ape had two productions in regional theaters, at Ghost Light Theatricals in Seattle and The Spot in Arroyo Grande, California, as part of its inaugural season.

Yet this year was probably more noteworthy for productions and adaptations of less frequently seen O’Neill plays. Foremost among these was All God’s Chillun Got Wings at the Jack Theatre in Brooklyn, which used the play to explore ongoing problems with race and racism in the United States to considerable effect. Desire under the Elms will have two productions in the second half of this year, one at Staten Island’s Sea View Playwright’s Theater and the other in Ireland as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival. Bound East for Cardiff and In the Zone were produced on the Tall Ship Gazela at Penn’s Landing as part of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Chris Christophersen concluded the Eugene O’Neill Festival with a performance at Tao House, while “Anna Christie” was put on by Role Players Theatre, for good comparison, in downtown Danville. And O’Neill’s seldom-produced one-act Thirst was innovatively integrated into The Big Show, which told the story of the life of Frances Farmer.

Along with those drawing upon O’Neill’s plays for dramatic raw materials, more and more dramatists have drawn upon his life. Jo Morello’s E.G.O.: The Passions of Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, which won the biannual playwriting competition of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, was produced by Balagula Theatre, Lexington, Kentucky. Swedish playwright Lars Noren’s And Give Us Shadows, which dramatizes encounters among O’Neill, Carlotta Monterey, and O’Neill’s sons from previous marriages, was staged at the Schoolhouse Theater in Croton Falls, New York. These plays follow previous works like Begotten and A Blizzard at Marble Neck and demonstrate that O’Neill’s life remains a near synonym for drama.