Mourning Becomes Electraby Eugene O’Neill

Further production details:www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

DirectorHoward Davies

DesignerBob Crowley

NT Education National TheatreSouth Bank London SE1 9PX

T 020 7452 3388F 020 7452 3380E educationenquiries@

nationaltheatre.org.uk

Workpack written by Jonathan Croall,theatrical biographer, and author of three books in the series ‘The NationalTheatre at Work’

Editor Emma Thirlwell

Design Alexis BaileyPatrick Eley

Mourning Becomes Electra

Contents

Introduction 2

Play Summary 3

The Director: Interview with Howard Davies 5

The Actor: Interview with Tim Pigott-Smith 8

The Designer: Interview with Bob Crowley 9

For Discussion 10

Practical Exercises 11

Written Work and Research 12

Related Materials 13

Education

MourningBecomesElectra

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INTRODUCTIONEugene O’Neill (1888–1953) was born in a hoteland died in a hotel. In between, he wrote someof the most powerful and demanding dramas ofthe twentieth century, works which brought himfour Pulitzer Prizes and the Nobel Prize forLiterature.

As a writer he had many flaws. The structure ofhis plays was sometimes cumbersome, hisstories were often melodramatic, his dialoguecliché-ridden. All of this can make them seemturgid or unreal when read. Yet when acted onthe stage they suddenly spring powerfully tolife. The intensity of the characters’ feelings,their outpourings of grief, despair and guilt asthey are pushed to extremes of emotion andbehaviour, effectively sweep aside thesecriticisms of his craft.

O’Neill was a great experimenter with differentforms, writing dramatic tone poems,expressionist sketches, naturalisticmelodramas and historical tragedies. He likedto work with different lengths: one of his plays(Strange Interlude) lasted six hours, others were

just twenty minutes long. He played around withmany theatrical devices, such as soliloquys,asides, masks, and using film on stage. Yet hewas one of the most autobiographical ofplaywrights, who essentially wrote to exorcisehis private demons. His principal subject washimself, and the extraordinarily painful anddamaging experiences within his family andthree marriages that haunted him all his life.

This is most obvious in his late masterpieceLong Day’s Journey into Night, ‘a play of oldsorrow, written in tears of blood’, in which hestruggled to come to terms with hisrelationships with his miserly actor-father, hisdrug-addicted mother and his alcoholic brother.But it was also in evidence in his earlier one-actplays, written before he achieved any realrecognition as a playwright with works such asThe Emperor Jones and Anna Christie. Andthough Mourning Becomes Electra, first stagedin 1931, is on the surface a historical trilogybased on an ancient story, in his portrayal of afamily tearing itself apart he was clearly makinguse of his own bitter experience.

O’Neill’s great mentor was Strindberg, but healso drenched himself in Greek drama. In 1926he jotted down some first thoughts about theplay: ‘Modern psychological drama using oneof the oldest legend plots of Greek tragedy forits basic theme – the Electra Story? – theMedea? Is it possible to get modernpsychological approximation of Greek sense offate into such a play, which an intelligentaudience of today, possessed of no belief ingods or supernatural retribution, could acceptand be moved by?’ Eventually he decided tobase the story on Aeschylus’ tragedy TheOresteia. In place of the Trojan War, he sets theplay at the end of the American Civil War, in1865. Agamemnon becomes Ezra Mannon,Clytemnestra his wife is Christine, Electra theirdaughter is now Lavinia, while Orestes their sonbecomes Orin.

The play

Tim Pigott-Smith & Helen Mirren

photo Ivan Kyncl

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PLAY SUMMARYThe three parts of the trilogy are Homecoming(4 acts), The Hunted (5 acts) and The Haunted(4 acts).

HomecomingAct One. The American civil war is ended, andChristine and Lavinia await the return of Ezraand Orin to their New England mansion. Withthem are their neighbours Peter Niles, who is inlove with Lavinia, and his sister Hazel, in lovewith Orin. Peter proposes for the second time toLavinia, but she again rejects him, as she issecretly in love with Adam Brant, the captain ofa clipper ship. Christine tells Lavinia that Brant,with whom she is having a clandestine affair, isto call on them this day. Lavinia then learns fromSeth, the Mannons’ handyman, that Brant isthought to be the illegitimate son of hergrandfather Abe’s brother David and a youngnurse, Marie. Brant arrives, pretending to courtLavinia as a cover for seeing Christine, and shetricks him into admitting his parentage. Angry,he reveals that her grandfather was also in lovewith Marie, and that his jealousy had led him todefraud his brother, an action which ledeventually to the deaths of Brant’s parents. Ashis mother lay dying in his arms, Brant hadsworn to revenge her death on Ezra, who hadrefused to help her when she was starving afterher husband committed suicide.

Act Two. Lavinia tells Christine that she knowsof her adultery with Brant, having secretlyfollowed her to New York and seen themtogether. Christine justifies her action byrevealing that she has hated Ezra since theirmarriage, and has been longing for love. Laviniaagrees not to tell her father about Brant ifChristine promises never to see him again afterthe present visit. Christine accuses her ofwanting Brant for herself, but agrees. Left alonewith Brant, she persuades him to obtain somepoison, which she will give to Ezra as if it weremedicine for his weak heart. She and Brant willthen be free to marry.

Act Three. As news comes of PresidentAbraham Lincoln’s assassination, Ezra arriveshome. He explains to Lavinia and Christine thatOrin has been slightly wounded, but will bereleased shortly. He is initially suspicious about

Brant’s visit, but Christine makes him believe hehas come on Lavinia’s account. Left alone withhis wife, he tells her that the war has made himre-think his life, that he loves her and wants tobreak down the barrier between them. Christineis horrified, but they retire to bed together.

Act Four. In the early hours in Ezra’s bedroom,after they have made love, Ezra accusesChristine of only pretending to love him.Enraged, Christine tells him of her affair withAdam. Ezra threatens to kill her, but his furybrings on his heart trouble, and he cries out forhis medicine. Christine pretends to get it, butadministers the poison instead. As Laviniahears her father’s cry and rushes in, Ezra pointsan accusing finger at Christine, then dies.Christine faints, and Lavinia discovers the boxof poison.

The HuntedAct One. Orin returns home, deeply affected bythe war. Lavinia warns him not to believe the‘lies’ that Christine will tell him about Brant.Christine rebuts Lavinia’s accusations that shepoisoned Ezra, and warns her not to persuadeOrin to go to the police with her suspicions.

Act Two. Christine admits to Orin that she hatedEzra, and he in turn confesses he is glad hisfather is dead, since the two of them can nowbe alone. She warns Orin not to believeLavinia’s stories about her and Brant, and hepromises not to. Lavinia arrives to ask Orin topay his respects to his father’s body. Christinethen tells Lavinia what she has told Orin,threatening to expose her daughter’s love forBrant and jealousy of her mother if there is amurder trial.

Act Three. Orin broods over his father’s opencoffin. He tells Lavinia his alleged bravery in thewar was actually a moment of madness. Shethen reveals that Brant is their mother’s lover.Horrified but not fully convinced, Orin demandsproof. Lavinia places the poison box on Ezra’sbody, and when Christine screams at the sightof it, Orin finally recognises that his mother hasmurdered his father.

Act Four. Christine arrives on board Brant’sclipper in Boston, to tell him that Lavinia knowsabout the murder. But Lavinia and Orin have

The play

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followed her, and listen in as she and Brant planto leave together on the next available ship.After Christine goes Orin shoots Brant dead; heand Lavinia make his death look like robberywith violence.

Act Five. Orin and Lavinia return to the house totell Christine that they heard her conversationwith Brant, and that Orin has killed him. Laviniatells her mother that justice has been done.Devastated, Christine leaves, and shootsherself. Orin discovers her body, and reactswith violent horror, convinced his actions havecaused her death.

The HauntedAct One. A year has passed. Hazel and Peterare opening up the house for Lavinia and Orin’sreturn from a long voyage in the east. Whenthey appear, Lavinia seems younger, is dressedmore attractively, and looks very like hermother. Orin on the other hand is haggard andlifeless, and fearful of entering the house so fullof terrible memories. Lavinia urges him to forgetthe past, and face his ghosts. She then confidesher worries about Orin to Peter, persuading him

that she loves him and that they should getmarried. Peter agrees, and promises to help herget Orin back to normal.

Act Two. Orin has been pushed by Lavinia intoasking Hazel to marry him. More unbalancedthan ever, he is secretly writing the familyhistory, including the truth about his parents’deaths. He tells Lavinia this, and threatens tomake it public if she leaves him to marry Peter.

Act Three. Hazel and Peter share their anxietiesabout Orin’s mental condition, and Lavinia’sinability to leave him alone. Orin arrives and,worried that Lavinia might steal his familyhistory, hands it over to Hazel for safekeeping.He asks her to promise only to read it if heshould die, or to show it to Peter the day beforethe wedding if Lavinia goes ahead with theirplanned marriage. Lavinia arrives and discoversthe document Hazel is trying to conceal. Shepleads with Orin to get it back from Hazel,promising to do anything in return. He agrees,and then insists she gives up Peter. But he alsomakes clear his desire for an incestuousrelationship with her, that would bind her to himin their shared guilt. Horrified, Lavinia tells Orinshe wishes he were dead, and taunts him withbeing too cowardly to kill himself. Crazed, anddesperate to be reunited with his mother, Orinleaves, and shoots himself.

Act Four. Lavinia is dressed in mourning forOrin’s funeral. Hazel arrives and, fearing she willruin Peter’s life, asks her to give him up. Sherefuses, and threatens to kill Hazel who,knowing she has some guilty secret, tells her tosearch her conscience. Lavinia, alone withPeter, pleads with him to marry her immediately,and when he demurs, suggests wildly that theymake love without waiting for the wedding. In her passion she lets slip the name of Brant.Realising the dead will never leave her alone,she tells Peter she cannot marry him after all.She persuades him to break from her bypretending she slept with another man whileshe and Orin were in the East. He departs,disillusioned. Lavinia vows to punish herself by living the rest of her life alone in the house,never going out or seeing anyone, with theshutters nailed up so no sunlight can ever get in.

The play

Helen Mirren

photo Ivan Kyncl

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THE DIRECTORHoward Davies

What were the play’s particular challenges foryou?

The melodramatic form which O’Neill deploysmade it a very tricky work to stage. It’s been areal balancing act between playing thingstruthfully and observing his high-octane, red-blood-cell take on all these characters. Theirmendacity, that they can say one thing and thengo out and promptly do another, is there for allto see, and that’s wonderful, we all lovewatching people behaving badly. But there aretimes when he just uses the device one toomany times. So I’ve cut nearly six hundred lines– which is why our production runs at four hourstwenty minutes rather than the original six and ahalf hours.

O’Neill is a devil to direct because he goes onthese mind-bending experimental journeys.With The Hairy Ape, for example, he’s emulatingEuropean expressionism, and then he setsabout writing Mourning Becomes Electra in theform of a Greek tragedy. In his diary writingsabout the play, he says he wants to writesomething which is realistic, and yet he alsowants to use the Greek form. He wrestles withthis continually, he beats himself over the headwith it.

Did he seriously consider having the actors inmasks?

At one point he did. He starts a draft, and says, Ihave to get rid of the masks and the bigsoliloquys directed to the audience, and hefinds that this is much better. He then tries for asecond time to put the masks and soliloquys in,and when that fails, he eventually abandons theidea. So it takes him nearly a year to write theplay, having tried various styles. Later in someother note he says he would prefer to havefuture productions done in masks – but he’swrong!

Did you make small cuts throughout, rather thancut any major part of a scene?

Yes. The designer Bob Crowley had alwaysbeen urging me to cut the short introductorytownsfolk scenes, but I felt you had to keep

them in. Of course there’s a fat chance of thembeing seen as a Greek chorus, as O’Neillwanted. But what they do is socialise the play insome way. Bob felt the scenes wereunworkable, clunky, badly written, simplistic –and to a certain extent he’s right. But they’re notwithout life or humour, and if you get asufficiently committed group of actors you canmake them work.

Why did you have a readthrough before youfinally cast the production?

It was in order to persuade Helen Mirren to dothe play. She kept on reading it to herself andsaying, I don’t get this. So we sat down for threedays, and after working on certain scenes, atthe end she was able to say, Oh I get it, I see it.It was not that she wasn’t capable of it, there’sno disregard of Helen. Quite understandably –as did most of the people when I first talked tothem about being in the production – she saw itas quite operatic in its form, and veryoverblown.

Part of my persuading Helen was saying, Pleasedon’t read those lengthy stage directions. At theend of three days she said, I begin to see how itworks. I said, Yes, in an actor’s mouth, in yoursand everyone else’s around this table, it’sworking because you’re not responding to hisdirections; he’s not written lines that are inflatedand crazy, he’s written directions which are. Iwas so fed up with having meetings with actorswho said, I don’t get it, that we cut all the stagedirections out of the script, and they just hadthe lines. So we approached rehearsals as if itwere a new play. At the first reading everyonewent, Oh God, this is so much easier than Ithought.

Did you do the same when you directed TheIceman Cometh?

No, because it’s written ten years later, andO’Neill has gone back to a form which is lessexperimental. With Mourning Becomes Electrahe’s really pushing the boat out, and in the endhe finds that he can’t, and he comes back tosomething he was always banging on about inhis notes, of creating somethingpsychologically real. But he’s also tormenting

Interviews

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himself by saying, How can I write a tragedy in aGreek style in a world which no longer believesin either fate or God? So he knows he’s settinghimself a problem. But with The IcemanCometh they’re a set of recognisable charactershe remembers from his youth, from the time hebummed around and nearly became analcoholic and tried to commit suicide. These arebased on real people, they’re not mythicfictional characters. He’s writing language as heremembers it. He does over-write thecharacterisation, and you have to deal with that,but they’re much more recognisable.

Was one part of the trilogy more difficult to workon than the others?

All the critics say Play 3 is the least well written.I don’t think it is. What they’ve missed is thatO’Neill cheats, and writes it in a different style.Greek drama is like soap opera: it’s not aquestion of what’s going to happen, it’s how it’sgoing to happen. You watch with a kind ofdelight that you’re in advance of the characters.And there’s something very soap opera aboutMourning Becomes Electra – you usually knowwhat’s going to happen, so you get a salaciousthrill. But in Play 3 you haven’t got a clue what’sgoing to happen. Just as you’re wonderingwhat else O’Neill can say, he abandons theGreek storyline and writes something new.

In Play 3 he’s writing about guilt. Orin andLavinia are destroying each other not because

they don’t like each other, as happens with thecharacters in the first two plays. On the contrarythey love each other as brother and sister, andthey’re inextricably bound up because they’vebeen abused in one way or another by one oftheir parents, and have then gone on thisjourney of revenge. But Orin is being used as atool by the sister, and therefore finds himself ina state of incredible guilt, and will not let her goor escape unpunished. They drag each otherdown into this whirlpool. In that sense it’sinexorable, but I don’t think you spot what’sgoing to come.

Did you give the actors any guidance aboutstyle before you started rehearsing?

I was being a bit faux-naïve and disingenuous,because I said at the beginning, I’m not sure ifthis play throws up problems of style, I thinkthese characters have to be real, but the scaleof the events – two murders, two suicides and about of incest – is a little bit big. The only way toapproach it is by making the charactersrecognisable if not realistic: the audience arenot going to sit there for that length of timeunless they can say, Oh I see why she’s donethat. It’s not opera, you can’t just sing your waythrough it, you have to allow the audience tospot why things are happening – why he is sojealous, why she’s annoying him, and so on.Therefore it has to be as real as possible. Thetricky thing was that, given that brief, the actors’instinct is to play everything very detailed andlow-key. So you just have to slowly open it up.It’s like becoming an athlete, you just slowlydevelop and develop your muscle, to allow youto be real but still to play it very strongly.

Has playing to the preview audiences forcedyou to make any significant changes?

We have to be careful, because the British ironictake is different from the full-on American wayof doing things. Some of the younger membersof the audience, on certain nights, found someof the moments risible, and we’ve had to workout how to get round that.

Interviews

Helen Mirren & Paul Hilton

photo Ivan Kyncl

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Were these the extreme moments?

No, funnily enough they were the throwawaymoments, moments that followed extremeviolence. For example, after Orin tells Christinehe’s killed Brant, she starts moaning, and hesays in an offhand way, ‘Mother, don’t moan likethat.’ And they laughed. So we now play itharsher. If you take the pressure off, peoplelaugh; but if he really goes for her, then you feelfor her because he’s being so violent, you feelhe should allow her to have her grief. So if youplay it selfishly and cruelly, then the audiencearen’t going to laugh; play it offhand, and theywill.

Bob Crowley’s set is truly amazing: were youhappy with it from the start?

When we first started talking about it, Bobshowed me a photograph of a house that he’dput a cross against in a book of his. In fact itwas in the South, but the architecture in theNorth looks very similar. It was Greek-temple,neo-classical architecture. It was an interestingphotograph because it was taken within theverandah looking out, so that you were slightlyinvolved in the house. There was an upper level,and we started trying to work out a very similardesign, with an upper level and a staircase, butit got so complicated we abandoned that. Thenwe had to face the problem of how to go fromthe outside to the inside and back again. We gotourselves very tangled up in the Rubik’s Cubeof trying to make that work. Bob solved it bysplitting the wall, allowing various shapes toemerge. It became slightly unrealistic, but Iembraced that, because I realised that if westarted breaking the rooms up as the playbecomes more nightmarish, that would be fine.

Then there was the problem of the ship. O’Neilldoesn’t give you an interval either side of it, youhave to go straight to it and then back again.There was one day when Bob and I werelooking at early cardboard models of the set,and looking at the pillars, and we both said, Isuppose we could use the pillars for the masts.That conversation gave him the idea of usingthe ceiling and tipping it. I said, We’ll never getaway with that, because it will involve torque –the way he wanted it to tip meant that it would

have to tip down at an angle. Having gone tothe engineers, who said it was impossible, hemanaged to work it out by building the ceilingas a three-dimensional piece – it looks as if it’slowering and twisting, but it’s not. It was awonderful solution.

How much did you talk about the music to yourcomposer Dominic Muldowney?

He came to see a runthrough, and afterwardshe said, The only purposive music I can do issimilar to what Bob is doing with the set, whichis to move the play forward. I have to shunt itinto the next scene, but not comment on thescene, it’s got to be a different voice altogether.It’s not like picking up Christine’s voice, it’s justgot to go, This is big, and this is movingforwards. I said I thought that sounded ratherruthless, so he suggested he put together somepieces. I listened to them, and realised he wasright.

It’s very subtle, the way he works in tunes likethe Battle Hymn and Shenandoah.

Yes, it’s almost subliminal. At the beginning itsets up a whole landscape which suggestssomething spooky, something slightly epic, youcan hear the battle in the background, a bit offife and drum. But it’s done as a memory, it’s acollage of sound that refers back to the civil warthat’s ending. All his music is linked to scenechanges, apart from one moment when Laviniadances for Peter. That’s an invention, it’s not inthe script, I just thought she should do it, weshould see a difference in her. We’reapproaching Play 3 with a woman who startedas a young, studious, slightly prickly intellectual,deeply resentful of her mother’s infidelity andsexual waywardness. Then she grows into afully sexualised being. I wanted to express thatwith a little underscoring at that moment.

I’m extremely lucky to have an artistic teamwhich has in it people like Dominic and Bob,and Mark Henderson, who does the lighting. Ican express my passion for certain aspects ofwhat they’re doing and my dislike of otheraspects, and nobody takes offence, becausewe’re all working towards the same goal.

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THE ACTORTim Pigott-Smith

Were you already familiar with the play?

Yes, I came across it when I was studyingdrama at Bristol University. I was completelyhooked, and for the next three weeks I didnothing but read all O’Neill’s other plays. What Iliked about them was not just their emotionalpower, which could make you laugh and cry, butalso their sheer size and scope.

Does that emotional power create problems fora modern actor?

It does, because however you look at MourningBecomes Electra, it’s a melodrama, and you’redealing with extremes. This makes it difficult toget the level of intensity right, so in rehearsalswith Howard it’s been a matter of seeing how faryou can go before you introduce a false note,and then bringing the whole thing back –keeping the lid on, as he keeps telling us.

What about O’Neill’s stage directions andcharacter descriptions?

They’re insanely detailed. When we did TheIceman Cometh we found them very restrictive,as we did those wretched brackets that say‘intensely’ or ‘passionately’ or ‘sardonically’.With Mourning Becomes Electra we used thefull script for the readthrough, and Helen saidhow limiting she found them. So Howard hadthe script printed out without them, withouteven exits and entrances – and it cut the lengthby some fifty pages. It’s remarkable how muchthat freed up the imagination. Since then Ihaven’t felt the need to go back to the stagedirections. We’re being very honourable to thescript, so I don’t think were going to do anythingthat will offend the O’Neill estate.

How did you approach your own character?

Ezra is a real puritanical, repressed NewEnglander. I think it’s easier to play someonewho is contained than someone who is letting itall out. In terms of modern fashion it’s muchmore sympathetic to suppress than release, atleast in England. What’s difficult about Ezra is tofind out how he lets it out, and why. Before hisfirst entrance we’ve heard so much about him

being uptight, yet he comes on and after a veryshort time spills his guts out to his wife. You’vegot about twenty lines to establish the man, andthen you go against character, which is peculiar.But you just have to rely on the skill of theplaywright. Howard doesn’t direct you to playironic, because if you comment on the play, it’sdead. But he allows irony to exist. The wholething is dramatic irony – Ezra comes home andhe says, I want to change my life, I love you –and in the scene before Christine has organisedthe poison! You don’t have to work at the irony,it’s there, that’s what the scene is.

Does the fact that it’s a trilogy cause particulardifficulties?

Play 3 is the hardest to make successful. Thefirst two plays are all doing, whereas in the thirdthe characters have to live with theconsequences of what’s happened. Apart froma suicide very late on, there’s no strong actionlike in the ship scene, it’s just pure gut-wrenching, screwing people to the floor,families are hell and misery stuff – which is hardfor an audience that has sat through a longevening. Also, because the play is so long, yousometimes don’t rehearse a scene for ten days.So in the early stage of rehearsals a lot of thework you have done can just filter away. Helenand I went two weeks without doing one scene,and when we ran through it, it was terrible, weknew it so lamentably that nothing happened at all.

What is distinctive about Howard’s style ofdirecting?

When you start on a new play it’s a nerve-wracking experience, you feel vulnerable, youthink you’re terrible. Howard waits until you’vegot through that stage, then he’ll give you a fewnotes, and leave you alone again. Just whenyou’re thinking you need to move further on,he’ll throw twenty darts at you. His timing isbrilliant, he understands the process of acting.He’s very clear and incisive in his thinking, heknows exactly what he thinks the play is about,and he has a notion of how it should be done.But then whatever else he does, he doesthrough you. He’ll only bring up those broadernotions if they’re relevant.

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Largely speaking he doesn’t work intellectuallybut practically. He says, ‘It’s good when you dothat’, or ‘It’s better when you do that rather thanthat,’ or ‘I’ve given you a wrong note there’ – sohe gets people relating to each other really fast.It’s a real open forum and a democratic one, hedoesn’t feel threatened by anyone else havingideas. The work is done in great detail, so youfeel very secure, you feel impeccably rehearsed,because you know you won’t say a single lineabout which you haven’t talked at some point oranother. Yet you also feel very free. It’s an idealplatform – even though you feel quite raw, that’sbetter than the opposite, the more corsetedkind of direction that doesn’t allow any room forerror – which the audience soon smells.

THE DESIGNERBob Crowley

What was the inspiration for your stunning set?

I’ve wanted to work on the play for twentyyears. When I was a student I found aphotograph of a Greek-style mansion inAmerica, taken from one end of the verandah sothe pillars were running away from you. As soonas I saw the photo I knew I would turn the houseon its side so you were looking through thecolonnade, that you would be looking up intothe ceiling as if you were inside the verandah.

It gave Howard potentially a rich palette to workwith, and also offered the actors a differentdynamic, the possibility of long exits andentrances as in Greek tragedy. In the finaldesign the walls are constructed to makestrange angled rooms and corridors, so thatyou never quite know where people are comingfrom. With a lot of the conversations people areafraid they are being overheard, and the setmakes that doubly disconcerting for them.

The house is as much a character in the play asthe characters are themselves. It’s talked aboutand described almost as if it were a person, soit has to have a huge presence. I wanted to up-end people’s expectations about what it shouldbe. I like coming at a given architecturalstatement, which here is the Greek templecolonnade, and giving it a different perspective.It means you have to re-think everything aboutthe play, everything has to be seen in a different

context, and yet you’re giving the audienceexactly the same information.

What were the main technical problems?

One dilemma was that mostly the scenesalternate between inside and outside the house.We wanted to avoid the audience having to sitaround for ages and ages while the furniturewas reset, so we stripped it down to the bareessentials. We kept the portraits, which areimportant because the characters talk to them.But there’s no extra dressing – those beautifulcolonial houses are not about dressing, they’reall about beautiful wood floors and beautifulpainted walls, the odd chandelier and the oddlovely chair. They’re not over-fussy or chintzy,they have a kind of Puritan ethic, and theinfluence of the Shaker community is strong.They’re beautiful, but creepy.

Another huge problem was the ship. Some 90per cent of the action is based at the house, butthen suddenly O’Neill has this fantastic sceneabove and below deck on a clipper ship on thedockside in Boston. The problem was how toget rid of the entire house; the solution weeventually hit on was to have the ship emergeorganically out of the house. So the ceilingslides down the three pillars, the back of itbecomes the deck of the ship, and the pillarsbecome the white masts. It took a lot of workingout in engineering terms, but the essence of thedesign was very simple.

Was it an expensive set?

Originally it came in three times over budget! It was too costly because we had all theseseparate rooms with separate trucks, eachcame on separately with a floor, which meantthat you put much more furniture on the stage.It was very heavy, and the engineering bill wasgoing to be enormous. I was very attached tothe design, as was the National, but theycouldn’t afford it. They asked me to redo itwithout losing its essence, so I made it muchsimpler. It’s the same design, but scaled down, and the stage crew carry on the furniture.I’m loath to say it, but I think it works better this way.

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1 At one point O’Neill considered having theplay acted in masks. What would havebeen the advantages and drawbacks ofsuch a device?

2 The play is based on Aeschylus’ tragedyThe Oresteia. How important is it that theaudience or reader is aware of this? Wheredoes O’Neill deviate from the story?

3 The action is largely dominated by twowomen, Christine and Lavinia. How far isO’Neill effective in getting inside the femalepsyche? Are these characters less or moreconvincing than Ezra, Brant and Orin?

4 Which of these characters do you findsympathetic – and why?

5 What are the main differences between thefirst and third play?

6 Why does O’Neill start each part of thetrilogy with a scene featuring a group ofminor characters?

7 The National’s production is in periodcostume. Could the play work in moderndress?

8 All-male or all-female productions of theclassics are currently in vogue. Do youthink O’Neill’s play could be given this kindof treatment?

For discussion

Dominic Rowan & Eve Best

photo Ivan Kyncl

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1 Any character, however evil, needs somepositive qualities if they are to engage theaudience’s sympathy or admiration.Working in small groups, one for each ofthe five main characters in the play, make alist of their good or redeeming qualities.Then have one member of each grouppresent a two-minute courtroom defenceof their ‘client’.

2 Working in pairs, improvise one of thefollowing key moments from the ‘backstory’:• Christine meeting Brant for the first time

in New York.• The quarrel over their inheritance

between Abe and David Mannon.• Lavinia seeing Ezra off to the war.• Orin trying to persuade a fellow-soldier

that they should leave the trenches andshake hands with the enemy.

• Marie dying in her son’s arms.

3 Choose a scene of two or three pages fromthe play. Act it first as melodrama, thennaturalistically. What are the maindifferences? Which style works best?

4 Working in pairs, imagine you are a friendof Lavinia’s, and that one year after Orin’sdeath you try to persuade her to end herisolation.

Practical exercises

Eve Best & Paul McGann

photo Ivan Kyncl

national theatre education workpack 12

1 Ezra and Orin return from the civil war. Findout what caused that war, and what wasthe most important consequence of theUnion victory?

2 Parent-child relationships are central to theplay. What was O’Neill’s own relationshipwith his parents like? How did it comparewith the portrait of the Tyrone family inLong Day’s Journey into Night?

3 Get hold of a copy of his earlier play TheGreat God Brown, and decide whether hisdecision to use masks is suitable for thatstory.

4 O’Neill was a hugely versatile playwright. Inwhich of his plays did he write about a) amixed-race marriage; b) an island dictator;c) life below deck on a transatlantic liner?

5 Read another of the key American plays ofthe twentieth century – perhaps one byArthur Miller or Tennessee Williams – andcompare its storyline to O’Neill’s play.

Helen Mirren

photo Ivan Kyncl

Written work and research

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FilmsMourning Becomes Electra (1947), directed byDudley Nichols, starring Michael Redgrave,Katina Paxinou, Rosalind Russell, RaymondMassey and Kirk DouglasDesire Under the Elms (1958), directed byDelbert Mann, starring Anthony Perkins, SophiaLoren, Burl IvesLong Day’s Journey into Night (1961), directedby Sidney Lumet, starring Katherine Hepburn,Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jnr, DeanStockwell

BooksStephen Black, Eugene O’Neill: BeyondMourning and Tragedy, 1999Travis Bogard, Contour in Time: The Plays ofEugene O’Neill, 1988Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O’Neill, 1974Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O’Neill: Life withMonte Cristo, 2000Michael Mannheim (ed), The CambridgeCompanion to O’Neill, 1998Yvonne Shafer, Performing O’Neill:Conversations with Actors and Directors, 2000Louis Sheaffer, O’Neill – Son and Playwright,1968Louis Sheaffer, O’Neill – Son and Artist, 1973

Websitewww.eOneill.com is a comprehensive archivelisting all the major sources for O’Neill’swritings, and for works about him and his plays.

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