Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy by Stephen A. Black (review)

Reviews 493 Most importantly, there is no distinction made between theatre in the United States and that of the neighboring nations of the Americas: Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America As a consequence, "America" is taken for granted as being located solely within U.S. borders. British imports - directors, plays, and productions - receive considerable attention, but Native American ceremonies and Fundamentalist revival meetings - indigenous and popular American performances largely free from foreign, especially European, influences - are ignored, probably because they are judged to belong to the field of performance studies, which has yet to be fully integrated into theatre studies. Still, The Cambridge History of American Theatre, Volume Ill, remains a first-rate reference guide and a valuable research tool that works as a companion to Gerald Bordman's three-volume series American Theatre: A Chronicle of Comedy and Drama and to his American Musical Theatre: A Chronicle (all from Oxford University Press). Wilmeth and Bigsby have compiled a broad bibliography and a richly detailed time line. There are occasional minor lapses (for example, Lonne Elder is spelled "Lonnie" on page 321), but the editors and essayists are scrupulous in ferreting out the details and firmly grasping the subject matter. What comes through most vividly is the link between the individualistic, get·up·and·go America that Alexis de Tocqueville described over 150 years ago and the visionaries who inspire American theatre. Martha LoMonaco soundly observes that many regional theatres "were founded andlor operated via the driving force of one person" (228), and, indeed, American theatre in the second half of the twentieth century has succeeded largely because extraordinary people have brought their talents to bear on it. Charismatic directors and playwrights (Elia Kazan, Joseph Papp, Zelda Fichandler, Sam Shepard, and August Wilson, for instance) drew other artists into their creative spheres, but only on a few occasions have ensembles and long-term commitments to the theatre come to fruition. The attraction of film and television, as this volume makes clear, has drawn many creative artists away from theatre, and, despite the celebration of American individualism and self-reliance that has inspired a variety of theatre artists, these artists have often lacked the patience or have gone without the necessary support required for the long haul of ensemble building. STEPHEN A. BLACK. Eugene O'Neill: Beyond Mourning and Tragedy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999· Pp. 543, illustrated. $29.95. Reviewed by Gary Jay Williams, The Catholic University ofAmerica In the nearly half a century since the death of Eugene O'Neill in 1953 and the publication of his Long Day's Journey into Night in 1956, the major 494 REVIEWS biographies and critical studies have devoted lavish attention to the autobiographical nature of his work. His late plays especially have been the focus ofreadings of the tonnented relationships among the O'Neill family, and particularly of O'Neill's oedipal problem. Arthur and Barbara Gelb's 1962 biography, recently expanded and reissued in three voluminous volumes; Louis Sheaffer's monumental two-volume biography of 1968 and 1973; the critical studies of Doris Alexander, The Tempering of Eugene O'Neill (1962), and Travis Bogard, Contour in Time: The Plays of Eugene O'Neill (1972); and James W. Hamilton's psychoanalytic articles in the 1970s: all explore autobiographical veins in the plays to some extent. One might, therefore, question the need for a new psychoanalytic biography, but Stephen A. Black brings a practiced, professional psychological acumen and rigor to his analysis of O'Neill in Freudian tenns. He does so almost in a case history fashion. The acumen comes in ahumane voice, and, as Black moves across the full spectrum of O'Neill's work, a more psychologically coherent view of the writer and his plays emerges. Black is a professor of English at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia who undertook considerable non-medical training and clinical experience in psychoanalysis to prepare him for this book. He has published articles on O'Neill in many journals, including Modern Drama, and The Cambridge Companion to Eugene O'Neill (1998) leads off with an essay in which he summarizes his thesis in this book. Black argues that O'Neill consciously used...