3/12/2010 - 3/28/2010
The setting is 1850's New England. Widower Ephraim Cabot abandons his farm to his three sons. Eben, the youngest and brightest sibling, feels the farm is his birthright, as it originally belonged to his mother. He buys out his half-brothers' shares of the farm with money stolen from his father, and Peter and Simeon head off to California to seek their fortune. Later, Ephraim returns with a new wife, the beautiful and headstrong Abbie, who enters into an adulterous affair with Eben. Soon after, Abbie bears Eben's child, but lets Ephraim believe that the child is his, in the hopes of securing her future with the farm. The proud Ephraim is oblivious as his neighbors openly mock him as a cuckold. Abbie has fallen madly in love with Eben and becomes fearful it would become an obstacle to their relationship, Abbie commits a terrible crime. An enraged and distraught Eben turns Abbie over to the sheriff, but not before admitting to himself his responsibility.
6/11/2010 - 6/27/2010
"Now I Ask You" is drawing room comedy stemming from America's "cultured" youth being fascinating by the latest (1916) intellectual fads. The play is light-hearted taking on free love, female independence, "modern" art, Nietzsche...anything in opposition to the bourgeois lives of the well-to-do. A gentle and genteel satire, the play was also the product of O'Neill's wife, Agnes Boulton, a successful commercial writer.
11/5/2010 - 11/21/2010
Long Day's Journey Into Night is considered to be O'Neill's masterwork, earning the Pulitzer Prize in 1957. The action covers a fateful, heart-rending day from around 8:30 am to midnight, in August 1912 at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrones - the autobiographical representations of O'Neill himself, his older brother, and their parents at their home, Monte Cristo Cottage.
One theme of the play is addiction and the resulting dysfunction of the family. All three males are alcoholics and Mary is addicted to morphine. They all constantly conceal, blame, resent, regret, accuse and deny in an escalating cycle of conflict with occasional desperate and half-sincere attempts at affection, encouragement and consolation.