Eugene O'Neill – författare

Eugene O'Neills moderna klassiker Lång dags färd mot natt i nyöversättning av Christian Ekvall och med efterord av Barbro Westling. Detta är pjäsernas pjäs. Av alla pjäser som författats är det förmodligen denna som har haft störst inverkan på nutida teater, och inte bara på teatern utan även på filmen, på de många filmer och tv-serier av idag som försöker gå på djupet för att återge den typiska kärnfamiljens komplicerade liv. Det är det krångliga spelet mellan familjemedlemmar. De inbördes relationerna som nästan alltid har sina envisa låsningar, lika smärtsamma som svåra att ändra. Som sjuttonåring såg Lars Norén Lång dags färd mot natt på Dramaten. Intrycket pjäsen gjorde på honom blev outplånligt och frågan är om inte hela Noréns livsverk som dramatiker står i nära relation till just denna pjäs. Eugene O'Neill fick Nobelpriset för sin dramatik redan 1936. Lång dags färd mot natt skrev han 1941, men eftersom den handlade om hans egen familj bestämde han att den tills vidare skulle läggas åt sidan. Han hade ett mycket gott öga till den svenska nationalscenen Dramaten i Stockholm och placerade pjäsens världspremiär där, år 1956. Allt sedan dess har Dramaten spelat denna och andra O'Neill-pjäser med jämna mellanrum, genom alla de decennier som förflutit. Det är inte överord att kalla O'Neill för en av Dramatens mest centrala dramatiker genom tiderna. Uppläggningen är enkel: En familj bestående av far (65 år), mor (54 år) och två söner (33 respektive 23 år) är hänvisade till varandra under en lång dag i sommarhuset. Det finns uppenbar kärlek i familjen, de tycker alla om varandra, men de kan inte låta bli att nöta på varandra. Det finns uppdämda besvikelser, det finns händelser i det förflutna att älta, att anklaga varandra för. Fadern Tyrone är, i likhet med O'Neills egen far, en turnerande skådespelare som fastnat i att år efter år spela samma roll, i Tyrones fall greven av Monte Cristo. Rollen har gett mat på bordet åt familjen, men den har också gjort honom till en desillusionerad skådespelare och under sönernas uppväxt var han en frånvarande far. Modern Mary är hans neurotiska fru med svag självkänsla som efter en olycka blivit morfinmissbrukare. De numera vuxna sönerna Jamie och Edmund har inte fått ordning på sina liv och kämpar med sina bitterheter och stukade självkänslor. Det sägs ibland att det är svårt att läsa pjäsmanus med samma behållning som när man läser romaner - men det gäller i så fall inte Eugene O'Neills pjäs Lång dags färd mot natt. Här är både scenanvisningarna och replikerna som den mest smidiga romantext man kan tänka sig. Redan när man läst tre sidor har man hittat läsarten - sedan fortsätter man läsa med samma glupande intresse som när man läser den mest spännande roman. Eugene O'Neills moderna klassiker Lång dags färd mot natt. ISBN 978-91-7742-633-2. Nyöversättning av Christian Ekvall, efterord av Barbro Westling. Högkvalitetspapper, sydda ark, mjuka pärmar med flikar, 176 sidor

A true modern classic from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers, Long Day's Journey into Night is an intensely autobiographical, magnificently tragic portrait of the author's own family - a play so acutely personal that he insisted it was not published until after his death.One single day in the Tyrones' Connecticut home. James Tyrone Snr is a miser, a talented actor who even squanders his talent in an undemanding role; eldest son Jamie is an affable, whoremongering alcoholic and confirmed ne'er-do well; youngest son Edmund is poetic, sensitive, suffering from a respiratory condition and deep-seated disillusionment; and their mother Mary, living in a haze of self-delusion and morphine addiction.Existing together under this roof, and the profound weight of the past, they subtly tear one another apart, shred by shred.'Set in 1912, the year of O'Neill's own attempted suicide, it is an attempt to understand himself and those to whom he was irrevocably tied by fate and by love. It is the finest and most powerful play to have come out of America' Christopher BigsbyEugene O'Neill's play Long Day's Journey into Night was written in 1939-41, and first published in 1956 (after O'Neill's death in 1953). It was first performed at the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, in February 1956, and had its first American production at Helen Hayes Theater, New York, in November that year. It won the Tony Award for Best Play, and O'Neill was posthumously awarded the 1957 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.This edition includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

More Stately Mansions represents the first printing of the complete and unexpurgated version of Eugene O'Neill's play, prepared from the original typescript housed at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The sixth in a line of eleven plays O'Neill planned but never finished, the play was part of a cycle he called A Tale Possessors Self-Dispossessed. The cycle would have spanned several generations and traced the Harford family's pursuit of material gain from 1755-1932. O'Neill completed and published only one other cycle play, A Touch of the Poet.Arguing that the 1964 edition of More Stately Mansions, prepared after the playwright's death, was missing a substantial amount of material that O'Neill intended for inclusion, Martha Bower presents an entirely new edition of the play with this material - dialogue, character description, an entire scene, the epilogue, and large parts of other scenes - restored.Written in 1939, and set in the 1830s and 1840s, the play is still of contemporary importance in its frank exposure of the devious intrigues of an American family's exploitation of a business opportunity. O'Neill's enlightened vision fostered the creation of two strong, intelligent women characters and the candid portrayal of a family dominated by love, hate, and jealousy. Reflecting the playwright's own unresolved family and sexual tensions, Bower holds that More Stately Mansions is, in fact, more true to the reality of his own essential pain than the so-called autobiographical plays.This restored and complete edition of More Stately Mansions will stand as an important contribution to O'Neill scholarship.

Long Day's Journey into Night was written in 1940 but not staged until 1956, after O'Neill's death. Unashamedly autobiographical, it is, as he puts it himself in the dedicatory note, 'a play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood', a harrowing attempt to understand himself and his family.

Eugene O’Neill has long been celebrated as America’s greatest playwright.  This year, in the centennial of his birth, Yale University Press takes pride in bringing out an edition of O’Neill’s little-known works of the imagination and his principal critical statements, most of which have not hitherto been published.  Edited and introduced by eminent O’Neill scholar Travis Bogard, the pieces—mostly early works—shed valuable light on O’Neill’s artistic development.Contained here are a four-act tragedy, “The Personal Equation”; the original version of Marco Millions; a dramatic adaptation of Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”; a scenario “The Reckoning,” and Bolton O’Neill; the fourth act of “The Ole Davil,” which became, with some alteration of tone, “Anna Christie”; and two short stories, “Tomorrow” and “S.O.S.”  Also included are an unpublished love poem and several critical and occasional pieces, composition of Mourning Becomes Electra and “The Last Will and Testament of Silverdene Emblem O’Neill,” written on behalf of his Dalmatian, Blemie.  “There is here no undiscovered masterwork,” says Bogard in his foreword, “but much here foreshadows what was to come as ‘Tomorrow,’ written in 1917, explores the ground on which The Iceman Cometh was to be created.  In some of the writing, O’Neill is struggling to learn his craft: the scenario of ‘The Reckoning,’ for example, shows him in the process of forming a lifelong habit of detailing a play in a long narrative account.  In the poem to Jane Caldwell and the memorial for Blemie, glimpses of a gentle, private man can be caught.  In the critical pieces, O’Neill attempts an uncharacteristic but interesting articulation of his theatrical principles.  In all the fugitive works gathered here, the O’Neill voice sounds clear…. It remains worth hearing.” “An important work about an unknown O’Neill that will reveal this fascinating personality to the general public.” –Paul ShyreTravis Bogard, emeritus professor of dramatic art at the University of California, Berkeley, has edited many works and papers of O’Neill, including, with Jackson R. Bryer, “The Theatre We Worked For”: The Letters of Eugene O’Neill to Kenneth Macgowan.

This book--published on the centenary of Eugene O’Neill’s birth--contains the only comprehensive collection of his letters. Providing a representative selection of O’Neill’s voluminous correspondence written over a fiftyyear period to intimate friends and family as well as to literary and theatrical personalities, the distinguished O’Neill scholars Travis Bogard and Jackson R. Bryer here offer through O’Neill’s letters new and revealing insights into the highly private life and thoughts of America’s greatest playwright.