Customer Reviews

Collected Shorter Plays

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The contents:
1. Bound East for Cardiff
2. Fog
3. Thirst
4. The Long Voyage Home
5. Ile
6. The Moon of the Caribbees
7. In the Zone
8. The Hairy Ape
9. Hughie

1-8 are all set on the on the ocean. A couple of them are lifeboat dramas, and the rest are mostly about the crew members of 'tramp steamers' and ocean liners. O'Neil has the ship workers speak in clunky vernacular, eg, "A chanty is what you want? I'll bet me whole pay day there's not wan in the crowd 'ceptin Yank here, an' Ollie, an' meself an' Lamps an' Cocky, maybe, wud be sailers enough to know the main from the mizzen on a windjammer..." They drink and sing and argue. Sometimes they reminisce about the old days and sometimes they talk about how hard it is to be poor and having to work so hard.

9. Is a conversation between a New York gambler, Erie Smith, and the clerk at the hotel he's staying in. Hughie was the old clerk and he and the Erie were chummy. Erie tells the new clerk what Hughie was like and tells him about his own life as a gambler. It's pretty much a monologue on his part but it gives a clever, focused portrait of a wannabe big shot. A classic seedy, delusional O'Neil character. This play was written much later than the others and it shows. O'Neil's technique has been refined. It's like he's not trying too hard anymore.

I really liked Hughie, that was a home run for me. The Hairy Ape was good too, though not nearly as polished.

I was lukewarm on the others. There's generally something worthy in all of them but you have to get through a fair amount of drunken, muddled verbiage. I get that O'Neil was trying to get the right atmosphere, and sailers drink and argue and talk trash, but just because it's accurate doesn't mean it's good drama. That's what I meant by trying to hard, by the way. In the earlier plays O'Neil focuses too much on making the dialogue sound slangy and naturalistic, so to speak, and not on what the characters real motivations are. So we get caricatures more than characters.

Anyway, I don't want to sound too negative. I am an O'Neil fan. I recommend Hughie without qualification, The Hairy Ape with some qualification, and the rest have their moments.