Introduction

Abstract

The mirror held up to nature applies sometimes literally when the playwright becomes a character in a play. Since Aristophanes made Euripides his main character in The Frogs (with grumpy Aeschylus his antagonist), the dramatist dramatized has been a recurrent motif in Western theater history. Among Prospero's self-reflective books, we find a wide array of works from Molière's Impromptu to Gross Indecency to My Week with Marilyn (also known as “My Year Before After the Fall”). Shakespeare has appeared in almost every medium, including video games (head to head with Ben Jonson or Bernard Shaw, depending on your avatar?).Eugene O'Neill, with his knack for self-dramatizing, took first crack at the plotline of his life, but since his death he has been a character in several novels (including one reviewed in this issue), a Hollywood movie (though several of Jack Nicholson's scenes in Reds wound up on the cutting room floor), an opera (thanks to Mr. Kushner), a meme site (eugmemeoneill.tumblr.com), and, so far, no video games. Aptly, his life has figured most often in works of theater, including recently reviewed plays by Derek Goldman, Jovanka Bach, and Lars Norén.In this jointly edited issue of the Review, we investigate the theme of O'Neill as he has been constructed and deconstructed, imagined and reimagined. This special section begins with a panel discussion, coordinated by David Palmer and J. Chris Westgate, followed by Ronan Noone's oblique angle on the O'Neill/Tyrone family in The Second Girl, which premiered at Huntington Theatre Company in 2015 and which already has two revivals in the works. Playwrights Herman Farrell and Jo Morello generously offered us excerpts from their full-length plays about O'Neill, and theater historian Laura Shea gave us her monologue piece, presenting O'Neill the boy. Finally, Rupendra Guha Majumdar gives us a lyrical evocation of our playwright. We are grateful to all others whose work we considered, and we wish these authors well in putting O'Neill onstage, where, “perhaps, the Hairy Ape at last belongs.”