Editor's Foreword

Abstract

This issue first declared itself as other recent issues have done: as a neural blip of anxiety about access to collections for the Lost & Found feature, publication of overdue books for the reviews, and receipt of high-quality essays from scholars and theater-makers muddling through uncooperative professional environments. And how to manage the Practitioners' Colloquium when so few people are … practicing?That sort of blip grows. This blip grew. To a beep, a bark, and a bellow. And beyond.Then, silence. Why? Let's start with Lost & Found. The partial shutdown of Princeton's libraries had prevented final work on “The Silver Bullet,” O'Neill's early sketch of The Emperor Jones. Fortunately, a Google search for “incisive commentary,” “O'Neill,” “eminence grise” (no itals in Google!), “Abbey Theatre,” and “very, very helpful” led me to Christopher Murray. He responded with a rigorous contextualization of a 1934 letter from O'Neill to the Irish American politician Patrick McCartan, in which the playwright regrets his inability to attend the Abbey's production of Days Without End. Murray elucidates the success in Ireland of a play that has never caught on Stateside. Is this essentially an Irish play? Murray seems to suggest as much.More good luck: three veteran members of the Eugene O'Neill Society published books late in 2020 or early in 2021. Sheila Hickey Garvey's account of the Circle in the Square Theatre earns a predictably thoughtful review by Anne Fletcher; Chris Morash, commissioned ad hoc by yours truly, overcame Brexit-related postal problems adroitly to handle Zander Brietzke's book on O'Neill's Cycle plays. The third book? A positive review of Patrick Chura's book on Mike Gold is in hand but was nudged aside to ensure adherence to our contracted page count. It's queued up for 43.2.Two newcomers weighed in with trenchant essays when I most needed them. Dan Venning evaluates O'Neill's position among Pulitzer Prize winners of his own day and ours. Informative in its own terms, the essay gains from its “Lost & Found” approach to documentary evidence. For example, an unpleasant and previously unpublished telegram from O'Neill about casting (or not casting) Black actors in his plays meaningfully wrinkles the ongoing discussion of O'Neill and race. Kaitlyn Farrell Rodriguez, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, makes her debut with a sturdy interdisciplinary assessment of “infantilization” in canonical plays by O'Neill, Williams, and Miller.Patrick Midgley provided a first-rate Practitioners' Colloquium by gathering friends and others who had participated in Brandon Fox's prepandemic Long Day's Journey Into Night, previously discussed by Fox himself, and glowingly reviewed by Jo Morello, in EOR 41.2 (2020). Midgley's interviews are equally long on bonhomie and insight.Two features that occasioned no anxiety are the performance reviews and Used Books. Performance review editor Bess Rowen's workload has soared during the pandemic, as, not coincidentally, has the Metropolitan Virtual Playhouse's commitment to Zoom productions of plays by O'Neill and others. The fact that three of this issue's five performance reviewers are making their first appearances in the EOR advertises Rowen's leadership in diversi-fying the journal. We also honor our past in this issue. As we roll through the centennials of O'Neill's plays, we have also reached what we might call the semicentennial of modern O'Neill criticism. In an expanded Used Books entry, Brenda Murphy, Jackson R. Bryer, and David Clare reappraise Travis Bogard's foundational Contour in Time (1972). Personal reflections from Bogard's friend and collaborator, Bryer, add a warmth that is never out of season.As always, I offer sincere thanks to our contributors and readers. Unanxiously.