The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1933-10-10
I he w orld
of the Theatre
BY HAROLD EDGAR
Eugene O'Neill

to recognize. The play is very
slight comedy of middle-class life
in the earlier part Of this century.
1t deals with the first loves and
adolescent experiences of a senior
high-school boy, the more reputable
and ordinary problems of tender
parents. the mild sex Illustrations OF
so-called average Americans. 1t is
the kind of comedy at its best that
is rather infrequent on our stage, al
though quite usual in continental
plays of pre-war years, the comedy
of simple home-life, of uneventful
DAYS in a bourgeois household, OF
small tempests in a teapot. AS such
it has it's value particularly in the
purely domestic scenes-since Amer
lean comedy tends too much to strain
itself toward big scenes and belly
laughter.
Aside from these gentle passages OF
reminiscent observation, which take
up about three-quarters of an hour
of a rather longish evening, the
writing and the content of the play
are hardly superior, though perhaps
a little more robust, than the milk
lest of the Booth Harrington novels.
Indeed, O'Neills picture of a seven
teen-year-o boy is entirely conven-
tional, banal, false. One observes
with no little irritation that the play
wright, who is supposed to have
broken away from stereotype stage
figures, can remember nothing more
about his youth than that there were
fellows who rebelled against their en-
vironment through Swinburne, Wilde,
Ibsen and Shaw, and mouthed callow
Socialist phrases, while there were
others who made dates with fast
girls in the back of barrooms, and
that both were fundamentally genial
good Americansl
We wonder whether this play,
harmless and inconsequential in it
self, is not clue to much OF O'Nellis
later work, and sign of what we
may exepct from him in the future.
AS a youth, O'Neill was surely not
like the young hero of his latest
play. He must have been passionate,
intense, emotionally uncontrolled, i'm
patient with the dead forms OF life
and of art around him, obstinate and
questioning. He broke loose, he met
real people, he went where life was
raw, difficult, painful. And the result
was the early plays, which for all
their shortcomings, had the beat OF
life in them, the SAVIOR of the soil,
the sea, sweat, struggle, misery.
During this period, O'Neill, i'm
mersed in the confusion and dark
ness of the life he saw, tended to-
ward romantic pessimism, 1ntellec-
tually immature but creative none
theless because it was close to reality.
Then as the leisure afforded him by
success permitted him to do some
reading he probably dipped into
Freud and Nietzsche. Freud fur
nished him with sort of scientific
chart to individual behavior;
Neitzsche, a lyrical way out OF chaos,
through the exaltation of tragic ex-
perience as an end in itself. The
result was a kind of half-baked OPP
timistic pessimism! 1t was half
baked in the sense that O'Neill had
ceased to experience life except
through chauteaux in France, Park
Avenue apartments, Georgia country
homes, the Theatre Guild and very
limited library. 1t was thin pessim-
ism since it was based on a concep-
ton of life, no longer on any con-
tact with it; it was an unconvinclng
optimism since it could not be trans
lated into terms of human action. In
this spirit O'Neill wrote his academic
plays, beginning with Marco Mil
lions" down to the present. These
plays were successful, for the most
part, because together with an al
ways tangible dramatic talent, their
pessimism seemed profound, their
optimism reassuring. But they were
mainly dead, demanding no dynamic
response from the audience, no posi-
tive point of view. For all his sim
certify and vehemence O'Neill was a
safe dramatist.
Today a choice must be made.
Either one sinks into a suicidal de-
spair Or one goes forward toward the
revolution as envisaged by Marx and
Lenin. But there are people who are
afraid, and there are people who are
protected. In one way or another,
they go backward to thoughts of a
happy yesterday-to the happy yes
terday which in O'Neill'sl case was
not happy at ALTO the times when
the struggle of life was less acute,
when there were not so many dis
turbing depressions, Invitations, strikes,
and omens of war. They write come
dies of recollection" not with an alive
feeling of today but with nostalgia
for past that never was. That is
why juvenile idyls like "One Sunday
Afternoon" are rapturously taken to
the bourgeois bosom, and that is why
Eugene O'Neill can't remember the
real young man he was.
We do not wish to accuse O'Neill
of political fascism-he would no
doubt scorn or shudder at the idea
but the state of mind which his
latest play betrays is reflection of
one aspect of the spirit which makes
for fascism And it is instructive to
note, from cultural standpoint, that
the period which led to this newly
found bliss, in which O'Neill sings
the beauty of autumn and winter
while he pats the memory of an I'M
real youth produced such puerile
problem plays" as Dynamo" such