Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History by Sheila Hickey Garvey (review)

Circle in the Square Theatre: A Comprehensive History culminates four decades of research and distills material covered in Sheila Hickey Garvey’s 600-plus-page 1984 dissertation, “Not for Profit: The History of the Circle in the Square Theatre.” Smooth transitioning from the clinical style of a lengthy dissertation to an engaging monograph is always a bit tricky and is perhaps more so in a study of a company—or at least a producing entity—that has remained operational, with few and brief interruptions, for some seventy years. Garvey expanded her original study to include vital material from 1984 to 2020. Selectivity and organization were key to this adaptation, and, while some may miss lengthy discussion of particular productions (e.g., George C. Scott’s performance in Death of a Salesman [1975]), the author focuses on the Circle’s productions of plays by Eugene O’Neill to create a “clear spine” (5). She might have been a bit more explicit in establishing her conceptual framework, but it becomes apparent as the Circle’s story unfurls.

Garvey was a student at the Circle in the Square Theatre School from 1973 to 1975 and continued to attend numerous productions and events at the theater for years to come. Longtime Circle in the Square producing director and later Broadway producer (most recently Hadestown) Paul Libin offered Garvey carte blanche access to the company archives—now housed at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center—for her dissertation research. Of equal importance is Libin’s ongoing friendship with Garvey through all stages of the book’s development to its final fruition. Garvey’s first-person research (informal conversations, formal interviews, and observations) melds with dogged and thorough traditional archival work to warrant the “comprehensive” in the book’s subtitle. No doubt Circle in the Square Theatre will be turned to as the definitive study for decades to come. It joins the ranks of “go to” monographs on seminal US theater companies, such as Wendy Smith’s Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre 1931–1940 (1990) and others.

After her introduction, Garvey presents material in two parts (“The Off-Broadway Years” and “The Broadway Years”), arranged chronologically across twenty-three chapters. Circle in the Square Theatre weaves together stories of the company and its production history—the careers, friendships, and “falling outs” of principal players Ted Mann, José Quintero, and Paul Libin; the famous actors who graced the Circle and repeatedly returned to the theater across their careers, including Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst, George C. Scott, and James Earl Jones; and the interrelationships between the Circle’s challenges and those of other companies (under the overarching umbrella of tension between the commercial and the artistic)—all unified by recurring productions of plays by O’Neill. Threading the needle of converging yet separate tales is no small feat, and by and large Garvey succeeds by setting guideposts along the way. Segues from chapter to chapter deftly remind the reader of where they have been, chronologically, and forecast what they will next explore.

One particularly clever extended marker of the passage of time and change lies in the description of different instances when famous O’Neill critics, producers, actors, and afficionados gathered to dedicate a plaque at the playwright’s birthplace. This trope is introduced early (7–9) and establishes the gravitas of the O’Neill connection across the lives of participants in the Circle’s evolution. Without question, Garvey’s explication of the O’Neill Renaissance precipitated by Circle in the Square should be of acute interest to O’Neill scholars. Mann and Quintero’s successful production of The Iceman Cometh in 1956 convinced Carlotta Monterey O’Neill to grant that team production rights to mount the Broadway premiere of Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Together, these two friends and collaborators changed the course of theater in the United States.

Their relationship was...