Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra [Paperback]

Eugene O'Neill (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 31, 1995

These three plays exemplify Eugene O'Neil's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts.

Editorial Reviews

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These three plays exemplify Eugene O'Neil's ability to explore the limits of the human predicament, even as he sounds the depths of his audiences' hearts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; First Edition edition (October 31, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679763961
• ISBN-13: 978-0679763963
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #30 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Drama > Anthologies

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Three great and rarely performed plays by Eugene O'Neill, November 17, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra (Paperback)

One of these three great plays by Eugene O'Neill is Strange Interlude which was written in 1923 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1928 when it originally ran on Broadway. Its running time is over four hours and it is usually performed with a dinner break. It is a family chronicle, of sorts, following the life of Nina Leeds and her family in a small university town in New England - from her early days as a young woman mourning the loss of her ideal lover during WWI, through her middle age years. It is the story of a family's secret and their determination to keep this secret unknown by others, and sometimes even to themselves. The play's most unusual quality, though, is found in the words that each character speaks. Not only do they converse with each other using naturalistic dialogue, but they also voice their subtext, which is unheard by the other characters in the play, but is heard by the audience. This device brings to the surface the secret life that each character in the play carries with them but is not willing to reveal to others. It creates, in the audience, as if it were another character in the play, a "sharer" of these stage characters' secrets. Through it all we view the lives of these characters with a fondness, and we root for them. Perhaps we root for them because we know, very much, why they are doing the things they do to each other.

The two other plays are well worth the experience of reading and/or seeing on stage. Mourning Becomes Electra, based on the Greek Electra myth, is especially wonderful. Its set in post civil war america and like Strange Interlude its length makes it a rare theatre treat to see performed on stage.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strange Interlude, April 15, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra (Paperback)

I'm new to reading drama, but I have never seen anything quite like "Srange Interlude." In this experimental work, O'Neill actually takes the reader into the thoughts of the characters, by not only thier dialogue or gestures, as in most works, but by letting the characters think their streams of thought aloud. The plot is extremely well developed, though it's tinged with cliche at times. It centers around a mentally unstable woman groping for happiness and the happiness of her four lovers, each lovers in diffferent senses of the word. The first is her high school sweetheart, killed in the war. The second is her lifelong friend. the third is her husband, and the fourth is her doctor. Each have their quirks and instabilities, which make this play a strange interlude, indeed.

4.0 out of 5 stars Exhausting, November 27, 2011

By 

JSmalls - See all my reviews

This review is from: Three Plays: Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra (Paperback)

O'Neill's "Mourning Becomes Electra" is astounding. The plot is timeless, the characters are amazingly drawn, and the dialogue is as brilliant as anything he ever wrote. The only problem with the play is that, like everything he wrote, his themes are exhausting because they're so heavy. This play is no exception.