Foreword

Abstract

With the revival of The Iceman Cometh with Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy playing at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2015, New York City becomes, once again, the epicenter of Eugene O'Neill productions. The theater capital has figured prominently in the success of O'Neill's plays, from the early days in the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street to the landmark production of Long Day's Journey Into Night in 2003, with Vanessa Redgrave, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brian Dennehy, to this summer's The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill, Volumes 1 and 2 from the NeoFuturists and Theater for the New City, which reimagines early plays (Recklessness, Warnings, Fog, Abortion, and The Sniper) without dialogue, as stylized gesture. New York's Lincoln Center was the apt place for “Launchpad of American Theatre: The O'Neill since 1964,” an exhibition reviewed here as part of an effort to extend the O'Neill Review's notion of performance and the performativity of space.Yet the attention surrounding the revival of The Iceman Cometh should not obscure the success of O'Neill's other dramas, which have been performed with increasing frequency in regional theaters across the United States. Suddenly in high demand, Desire under the Elms showed up at the Raleigh Little Theater in North Carolina and the F. Scott Fitzgerald Theater in Rockville, Maryland. The Ensemble Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, continues its prolonged exploration of the plays of O'Neill with Beyond the Horizon and “Anna Christie” this season, while Bayou City Concert Musicals presents George Abbott's musical adaptation of the latter play, New Girl in Town, in Houston, Texas. Affirming the appeal of O'Neill's plays in the South, The Hairy Ape was staged at the Itinerant Theatre in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Across the country the same is true, with productions of A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, California; The Iceman Cometh at the O'Neill Festival in San Ramon, California; and Long Day's Journey Into Night next season at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival.Likewise, O'Neill's plays continue to enjoy international success beyond the traditional locations like London. Two productions, in fact, exemplify the global reach of O'Neill's plays, starting with Long Day's Journey Into Night at the Teatro Marquina in Madrid, Spain. More intriguing is the adaptation of Desire under the Elms at the Baxter Theater in Cape Town, South Africa (reviewed here), which suggests, ironically considering the subject of this play, new and fertile ground for O'Neill's plays around the world.