Foreword

Abstract

With the much-anticipated productions of The Iceman Cometh at the Goodman and Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Apollo Theatre in London now closed, the rest of the 2012 season might seem a letdown, though we have more than just the memory of Nathan Lane's Hickey to give us hope for tomorrow. O'Neill's late classics continue to receive major revivals, with the Eclipse Theatre in Chicago concluding its season-long exploration of O'Neill with Long Day's Journey, Les Waters choosing the same play for his debut as the new artistic director of the Actor's Theatre of Louisville, and the Good Luck Macbeth Theatre Company staging A Moon for the Misbegotten for its inaugural production—all in the fall of 2012. Next season already looks promising, with the Guthrie Theatre producing Long Day's Journey and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC, producing Hughie.However much of this season has been dominated by talk about revivals of these classics, 2012 was significant for productions of a wide range of O'Neill's earlier plays. The Playwright's Theatre in Danville gave a staged reading of Exorcism and produced Diff'rent, while the Role Players Ensemble produced Ah! Wilderness as part of Danville's annual O'Neill Festival. Two productions of Exorcism are in the works, one in Manhattan and the other in South Camden, New Jersey—five productions, to date, of this recently rediscovered play that has a remarkable potential to inform how actors, directors, and audiences view Edmund from Long Day's Journey. The Hairy Ape was revived in St. Louis, and Desire Under the Elms was produced at the Lyric Hammersmith in London—all in fall 2012. Toronto's Shaw Festival announced its 2013 season, which will include O'Neill's first play, A Wife for a Life, in a double bill with Susan Glaspell's Trifles, an intriguing pairing given the complex ways that the plays represent gender.One of the most intriguing trends of this season, however, has been experiments with O'Neill's plays and life that follow The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill. Begotten, written and directed by Derek Goldman and reviewed in this issue, takes audiences through a range of O'Neill plays and techniques as well as inside the playwright. Another play, Morphing, written and directed by Matthew Posey, played at the Ochre House in Dallas and was described by reviewers as an “absurdist spoof” of Long Day's Journey.If 2012 tells us anything, it's that O'Neill's plays and life remain a touchstone in theater today, nearly a hundred years after O'Neill announced his ambition to be “an artist or nothing.” Given how much O'Neill influences and inspires directors, actors, playwrights, and audiences, it's safe to say this was a year that affirmed O'Neill's achievement.