O'Neill and Beg for Mercy!
Eugene O’Neill – an American playwright from the early 20th century. His plays – which include Desire Under the Elms, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Iceman Cometh, and A Moon for the Misbegotten – follow a standard pattern that NEVER varies.
His first acts are witty, character-driven plots teaming with interesting people. They are an actor’s wet dream. Good for him! Better for them!
His second acts are intermittently serviceable, but the “interesting” characters from the first act have to take the absolute most loquacious, circuitous route to revealing every little, soul-wrenching secret they’ve ever possessed. These second acts slowly but invariably become a symbolic combination of exorcism and molar-extraction performed without anesthesia in a pool of thick syrup.
His third act is a relatively short summation of how the characters will ever survive after the soul-peeling purgatorial confessions of his agonizing second act.
Even comfortable seats won’t fix this, people…
So, David and I saw A Moon for the Misbegotten at Orlando UCF-Shakespeare. The acting, the set, and the direction were superb. (There was one part, though, that I kept thinking would have been breathtakingly performed if only Russ Blackwell were playing the role. The current actor was fair, but Russ would’ve broken my heart.)
The biggest problem was that it was a typical O’Neill play. Like some people with Shakespeare, a lot of people believe that Eugene’s plays should not be edited. People, I am a playwright. Playwrights NEED editors. EVERY playwright needs an editor. Just because you are Edward Albee doesn’t mean that, occasionally, you accidentally pen some windy crap (see his Lady of Dubuque – or don’t, rather.)
Audiences change. What an Elizabethan audience wanted to hear six different ways over the course of a four-hour play, modern audiences watching Shakespeare will be permanently scared from the theatre by. O’Neill’s audience in 1952 is distinctly different from today’s audience. Nowadays, the ability to achieve a dynamic theatrical (or cinematic) experience in under two hours should have it’s own reward. (And the reason I mention this is because movies are also getting pretentious with their lengths. Damn you, Martin Scorcese and Anthony Minghella, right along with all those long-winded playwrights.)
People, it ain’t a penis; longer ain’t necessarily better.
And wow, could this entry use some editing!
posted by Schmacko @ 8:08 AM
5 Comments:
I agree Sarah - and thank you and everyone else working on this for bringing the thing up-to-date.
I just got an email from David Lee, the director and he tells me that Act II was actually THREE combined acts, and they did cut 25 minutes. You read that correctly, TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES. I thanked him profusely for sparing us the agony.
I have to disagree.
There is a place for all sorts of theatre in our society regardless of the change in audience standards over the years. The same audiences that are fawning over MAMMA MIA today are certainly a far-cry from the people who so gallantly support Sondheim, Brown, LaBute, Abaire, etc.
Plays deserve to be preserved in their entirety as the author intended. We all know that you don't want people hacking into your work years after you die.
I love Eugene O'Neill. As we all know, he was in a sad state for the majority of his life--and I think what he "said" in his work required epics. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT absolutely requires four hours in order to fully delve into the family's idiosyncracies correctly. I, for one, don't want it "rushed." You can be sure that I would be ticked off if any director decided to cut away from the Jamie/Edmund or James/Jamie scenes in Act Two or the delicious return of Mary Tyrone in Act Three.
Shakespeare is still performed in full today. Yes, often times it is edited for production constraints, but it is just as often performed without editors--which I feel is very fair to the author's original intent for the play.
Good for you, Eugene O'Neill for saying what you want to say--and good for the people who continue to be brave enough to produce your work 50 years after you've passed on.
XOXO,
Matty
So, Matty
If I write a nine-hour play and every word is brilliant, should I expect that audiences won't become restless?
Yay! No pee breaks for you!!!
If that's the work you are proud of and wrote and the producers decided to produce it--then yes.
But, even Eugene O'Neill, whose longest piece is MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA I believe, has intermissions and "pee breaks."
Whatever floats your boat, Schmacko.
Post a Comment
<< Home