home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
/
TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
/
1920
/
20interl
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-02-27
|
2KB
|
58 lines
<text>
<title>
(1920s) Strange Interlude
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1920s Highlights
Theater
</history>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Strange Interlude
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(FEBRUARY 13, 1928)
</p>
<p> Strange Interlude. Culture climbers, scattered seafaring men,
drama devotees, Germans, George Jean Nathan, common people eyed
narrowly the first performance of the season's prodigy. Eugene
Gladstone O'Neill's nine-actor was solemnized by the Theatre
Guild. The play began at 5:25, ran until 7:30, took recess for
hungry actor and audience, resumed at 9, discharged at 11:10.
</p>
<p> The play was strange, not only by reason of its length.
Playwright O'Neill re-introduced the aside mainstay of earlier
dramatists, long discarded by scornful realists. His people's
works and actions he completed with their thoughts. Every few
moments the action stopped completely while an immobile
performer spoke what was rattling through his mind. The spoken
word was often direct denial of its companion thought.
Suspicion, mastered grief, cynicism, inferiority--the raw
matter of truth--were permitted and expressed. The author
tried devotedly to give his hearers a third theatrical dimension.
The strange convention, difficult at first to grasp, soon blended
into the engrossing total.
</p>
<p> Nearly everyone agreed on faults. The play dragged toward the
end. As age smothered the characters their dramatic interest
dwindled slightly. The asides were not always accurately and
shrewdly handled; the new technique was necessarily a trifle
coarse. Rose the inevitable foolish chorus that Nina was a vile
female and should never have been written up at all. Some
strove to discredit it with the growl that O'Neill had simply
taken many findings of the psychoanalysts and copied them into
his characters.
</p>
<p> Beyond and above all these disturbances rose the conviction
of many an acute observer that a great play had been delivered
to the world. Writhing and not always sharply articulate in the
labor of his composition, Playwright O'Neill has done no tidy
job. Raw life does not arrive that way. Uncompromising, tiny and
horribly large, mystic and yet inestimably exact, Strange
Interlude sweats blood.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>