Customer Reviews

Ten "Lost" Plays

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The ten plays in this collection (A Wife for a Life, Thirst, The Web, Warnings, Fog, Recklessness, Abortion, The Movie Man, Servitude, and The Sniper) were all written in the very earliest part of O'Neill's career, from 1913 to 1915, and were (and still are) all overshadowed by the numerous masterpieces O'Neill wrote beginning in 1920 with Beyond the Horizon. In the years before he began writing, O'Neill spent a great deal of time at sea, attempted suicide, and then came down with tuberculosis and spent six months at a sanatarium, where he discovered the works of Strindberg and others and decided to become a playwright. This is all reflected heavily in these plays: one of them deals with a consumptive character, three are set at sea, and a number of them end in suicides. Also, two of them deal with marital infidelity among the wealthy, a topic that I don't think O'Neill ever returns to in his later works but which was a favorite subject of O'Neill's idol Strindberg (in particular, Recklessness relates the affair between a married woman and her servant, which should sound familiar to readers of "Miss Julie.").

All of the plays except the three-act work Servitude are only one act and under thirty pages long. Presumably, O'Neill felt a lot more comfortable at this point in his career sticking to short treatments of matters that were close to him, and this appears to have been a good idea. Pretty much all of the plays in this collection show definite signs of the powerful tragedy for which O'Neill is known, and, considering how short they are, many of them are quite moving and haunting. While O'Neill had not yet reached his full maturity at this stage, he definitely was well-enough prepared to write very good one-act plays. His later, longer and more demanding works are very justifiably more famous than these ones, but if you enjoy O'Neill's better-known plays, his earliest works provide a very good view of the development of his style and talents, and you will probably enjoy them as well.

This inexpensive paperback reprints nine one-act plays and one full-length play, combining material that had appeared previously in two volumes:

1) "Thirst and Other One-Act Plays" (1914), containing "The Web," "Thirst," "Recklessness," "Warnings," and "Fog"--none of which were ever truly "lost."

2) "Lost Plays of Eugene O'Neill" (1950), including "A Wife for a Life," "The Movie Man," "Abortion," "The Sniper," and "Servitude"--all of which O'Neill thought had been destroyed but which were subsequently found in the Library of Congress's Copyright Office and edited by Lawrence Gellert, whose introduction is also included in this paperback.

As dramatic pieces, these plays (written between 1913 and 1915) range in quality, from daring to interesting to downright embarrassing; only "Thirst", "Fog," and "The Sniper" were performed during O'Neill's lifetime and none are likely to grace a stage today. Nevertheless, they are fascinating for scholars and writers who might be interested in watching a young, hesitant ingenue transform into an experienced, bold playwright.

A few of the plays stand out. "Warnings" examines the events that lead to a shipwreck, while "Thirst" and "Fog" both depict shipwreck survivors struggling to stay alive in the sea; all three prefigure O'Neill's later series of plays featuring sailors. Although unbearably melodramatic, "The Web" shows O"Neill attempting to write in street dialect for the first time. "Abortion" is a rather scandalous (for its time) and unexpectedly moving depiction of the aftermath of an unwanted pregnancy.

In the volume's one full-length play, "Servitude," O'Neill experiments with dramatic structure, opening with a climactic and shocking scene--what proves to be a preview of the finale. While deeply flawed, the play turns out to be a comedy at heart, exhibiting the satirical dialogue and mature witticisms that were to make him the only American dramatist to win a Nobel Prize.

After a few years of unsuccessful work as a playwright, Eugene O'Neill became a star of the business. Much of his early work was forgotten and rarely produced. In 1950, a publisher raked together 10 of those early pieces and published them. I hope it was a commercial success.
The early plays are immature, as could be expected from apprentice work. Most are just moments, no real stories, without any depth or potentials. Some contained the nucleus of something bigger. Five of the plays were first published in a book called `Thirst', printed by EON's father in 1914.
The subjects of the plays are clearly and naturally linked to the author's life experience: the tuberculosis, the drinking, the sea, the various suicides.

A Wife for a Life: a gold miner finds out that his pal of the last 5 years has a girl friend in the East, who is his own ex wife.

The Web: tuberculosis, domestic violence, jealousy, heroism, and murder in the underworld. A fugitive robber is the hero, a pimp the villain, and a sick prostitute the victim of bad police work.

Thirst: two men and a woman on a raft on a tropical ocean after a shipwreck. Sharks circle the raft. Sun burns down. Water has run out. No ship or island in sight.
The play was staged in Provincetown with Louise Bryant.

Recklessness: young wife loves wealthy husband's chauffeur; husband lacks sense of humor and finds revenge easy. (a previous reviewer points to a similarity with Strindberg's Julie.)

Warnings: wireless operator falls deaf and sinks his ship, as he can't hear the warning messages from other ships; he also had had warnings about his hearing, but couldn't quit his job as he had to feed wife and 5 kids.

Fog: 3 people adrift in a lifeboat without oars after a shipwreck, in fog near Newfoundland. Unexpectedly it turns out to be a ghost story.
This one was also staged in Provincetown.

Abortion: college baseball star experiences triumph after a big victory and tragic disaster on the same day, when he learns that a girl has died from an abortion that he had arranged.

The Movie Man: a rare, for EON, `comedy', but a rather black one. Film company sponsors a Mexican revolution with exclusive filming rights to battles, executions etc. The central idea has been picked up by others, later. How the media create their own subjects.

Servitude: this 3 act play from 1914 premiered in Wisconsin in 1981. It is more complex and surprising than previous plays, but it suffers a bit from a lack of psychological plausibility. A naïve young woman confuses a man's person with his books and messes up her own family life, and his. She learns to see her mistake and is able to repair all damages in a short time. It works best if seen as a comedy.

The Sniper: set in Belgium in WW1, a farmer picks up his rifle after his family dies in acts of war. This was one of the plays staged in Provincetown, in 1917.

If I had to choose from these 10, I would say that the media satire (The Movie Man) and the semi-comedy on book wisdom versus actual life (Servitude) were the more promising starts. The others are too uncertain of their intentions. Producing these plays for a stage today without making fun of them would seem hard.