ABSTRACT This article explores and documents Eugene O’Neill’s plays in 1920s London theater. This entails productions by the Everyman Theatre (repertory), the 1923 West End “Anna Christie” with Pauline Lord, the 1925 Emperor Jones with Paul Robeson, and the experimental productions from expressionistic director Peter Godfrey at the Gate Theatre Studio and the Court Theatre. Additional producers and directors considered include Norman MacDermott, Charles Cochran, and Barry Jackson. Productions at additional theaters, such as the International Stage Society and the Arts Club Theatre are also included. London critics who reviewed and publicized O’Neill’s London plays, such as Arthur Walkley (The Times), E. A. Baughan (Daily News), as well as the unsigned critics of The Stage and The Era papers are also considered. Actors who performed the plays are included. The documentation includes every production of an O’Neill play in London during the 1920s.
ABSTRACT Playwright James Ijames, who has garnered critical attention for plays like Kill Move Paradise, Good Bones, and his Pulitzer Prize–winning Fat Ham, shares his thoughts on Eugene O’Neill in this interview. As the title suggests, Ijames sees O’Neill’s influence as almost mythical in scope, although he also speaks to the practical aspect of O’Neill’s craft that he admires. Ijames shares his perspectives on O’Neill’s work from the point of view of his own training as an actor, director, and playwright, which enables him to engage with the plays in myriad ways. This conversation between Ijames and Bess Rowen, both faculty members at Villanova University, provides a brief look into Ijames’s ability to connect to many different kinds of storytelling and to combine an appreciation for the past with an optimism about the future of where we’re headed in the theater.
ABSTRACT This interview is an in-depth discussion, from a performance perspective, with internationally acclaimed Tony Award–winning director Robert Falls. Falls reflects on his many productions of Eugene O’Neill’s plays, including A Touch of the Poet (1995–96), The Iceman Cometh (1991; 2011–12), Long Day’s Journey Into Night (2002), Desire Under the Elms (2008–09), and Hughie (2004–05). Falls also produced an international Eugene O’Neill Festival (2011–12) at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre and produced the transfer to Broadway of A Moon for the Misbegotten (2000) starring Gabriel Byrne and Cherry Jones. Falls worked with actor Brian Dennehy on all the previously named O’Neill productions and with other actors such as Vanessa Redgrave, Nathan Lane, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robert Sean Leonard, Pamela Payton-Wright, and John Douglas Thompson. Visually, Falls allows himself to move freely between realism, surrealism, and an epic painterly expressionism when directing, depending on what he believes a given O’Neill play requires.
