Foreword: Transnational O’Neill

As a young man Eugene O’Neill boarded a ship headed for Honduras, leaving his wrecked marriage and other misadventures behind him. This would be the first of several sojourns abroad for O’Neill, including trips to Argentina, Spain, the Canary Islands, and several stops in the Far East, also residencies in Bermuda and France. America’s first great playwright was, from the beginning, a writer with connections beyond America’s borders.

With the increasing transnational scope of literary and theater studies, the Review has launched a new effort to broaden the cartography of O’Neill scholarship. This is not to say that O’Neill scholars and the Review have not previously examined O’Neill in international contexts: on the contrary, the O’Neill Society has held conferences in China, France, and Bermuda, and numerous essays in the journal have examined O’Neill from an international perspective. Building upon this work, we have reached out to international companies, artists, writers, and actors to feature the wide world of O’Neill productions on the cusp of his centennial as a professional playwright. O’Neill is—and perhaps always was—a transnational O’Neill.

Is there a resurgence of O’Neill productions around the globe, or have we just now picked up their return on the radar? It may impossible to answer this question, but there are some intriguing patterns in the productions featured in this issue. All three foreign productions cut O’Neill’s texts significantly (with running times around two hours), making the performances not only shorter but also tighter and arguably more suitable to modern audiences. The adapters in some cases took liberties with O’Neill’s text, not just cutting but also adding flourishes. In the French and Spanish productions, there was also a tendency toward a spare set design, allowing the words and the all-star casts to shine through.

Five of the productions reviewed here (two versions of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, “Anna Christie,” The Iceman Cometh, and The Second Girl) are set during 1910–12. O’Neill scholars know the importance of the 1910s to the playwright’s biography, but it was also a formative moment in the Progressive Era’s reform efforts. Although these plays were all written years later, their stories take place during that poignant time shortly before O’Neill landed in the sanatorium, before he joined up with the Provincetowners, before he took Professor Baker’s class. This was also the time period the young O’Neill landed in Buenos Aires, suturing his connection not only to the sea but also to overseas travel.

This issue of the Review includes performance reviews of two important productions of Long Day’s Journey Into Night—one Spanish and another Australian—which, taken together, provide a snapshot of the antipodal allure of O’Neill. In the Madrid production, as Bettina Schödel shows, the powerhouse actor-producer duo Mario Gas and Vicky Peña deliver O’Neill as a demonstration of their commitment to global theater in Spain. The first major production since its Spanish premiere in 1960, this Long Day’s Journey left the audience speechless. Director José Luis Alonso has directed O’Neill plays for fifty years, beginning in 1965 when he premiered Desire under the Elms in Spain. The Gas/Peña team is well known in Spain; however, normally Gas directs Peña. This is the first time they shared the stage, and their performances were both unprecedented and successful.

Over in Australia, the Independent Theatre’s production of Long Day’s Journey provides another instance of a major theater company presenting O’Neill’s work. Samela Harris notes that the Independent Theatre is known for research and deep rehearsal, aimed at a well-educated audience. Rob Crosner’s company has specialized in staging classics, from Oscar Wilde to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Given that Long Day’s Journey had not been performed for almost thirty years in that part of South Australia, Adelaide’s audiences were receptive and enthusiastic.

Stateside in Boston, the new play The Second Girl can be thought of as a companion piece to...