O'Neill Collection – serie

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.

Two compelling and thought-provoking plays from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers.Anna Christie Eugene O’Neill’s epic Pulitzer Prize-winning play about love and forgiveness charts one woman’s longing to forget the dark secrets of her past and hope for salvation.Exiled from her home by the Old Devil Sea to the inland plains, Anna Christie’s life changed for ever at just five years of age. Fifteen years later, she is reunited with the father who sent her away, and sets sail in search of a new beginning.Anna Christie was first staged at the Vanderbilt Theater, New York, in November 1921. Its first London production was at the Strand Theatre in April 1923.The Emperor JonesAn expressionistic chronicle of a black dictator's flight from his oppressed subjects.Brutus Jones rules his island's citizens from his opulent palace with tyrannical ease – until the day that they all disappear. They have retreated to the hills, following their former native leader Lem, and plan to revolt. It is time for the Emperor to make good his escape.The Emperor Jones was first performed at the Playwrights' Theater, New York, in November 1920. Its UK premiere was at the Ambassadors' Theatre, London, in September 1925.This edition includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

An affectionate and witty comedy of recollection from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers. Eugene O'Neill's only well-known comedy, Ah! Wilderness is a family-based saga set in the years just before the First World War.Richard Miller is deeply enamoured with his 'best girl', the pretty and pure Muriel. But when her cantankerous father finds out about their plans to spend Independence Day together, he demands that she write to him breaking off the whole thing. Richard is distraught, heartbroken, and seems about ready to knuckle under to strong liquor and fast women... Can his father Nat reach across the generation gap and bring his son back to the family – and Muriel?Eugene O'Neill's play Ah! Wilderness was premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre in October 1933. It was first staged in the UK at Westminster Theatre, London, in 1936.This edition includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra is a trilogy of full-length plays, reworking themes from Greek tragedy, particularly The Oresteia of Aeschylus, relocated to New England in 1865, just after the end of the American Civil War.Lavinia Mannon (Electra) dotes on her father Ezra (Agamemnon), who has just returned victorious from the war, and despises her mother Christine (Clytemnestra) – especially since Catherine has been making a cuckold of Ezra with Lavinia's ex-suitor, Adam. Lavinia's brother Orin (Orestes), on the other hand, war-wounded and weak, idolises his mother and resents his overbearing father. When Christine and her lover poison Ezra, Lavinia convinces her brother that they must avenge their father's death. But they have spent years soaking in family conflicts and curses of generations past, and fate will be sated...Mourning Becomes Electra was premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre in October 1931.This edition of the play includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.

An ominous play set in a cruel world of dark realism, an acknowledged masterpiece from one of the twentieth century's most significant writers.Harry Hope's Saloon is a waterfront bar full of life's failures. They exist barely, living on the knowledge that love is a chimera and despair is perpetual; that the desires they cultivate of an impossible future are only ever pipe dreams, because the only thing to look forward to is death. And then one day Hickey walks in with his own personal brand of hope, and his urge to make them face the truth.Written in 1939, Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh was first staged at the Martin Beck Theater, New York, in October 1946. It had its UK premiere at the Arts Theatre, London, in January 1958.'A dramatised neurosis, with no holds barred, written in a vein of unsparing implacable honesty' Kenneth Tynan'O'Neill, the great patriach of Broadway and the playwright who laid out the map on which all contemporary American drama is still written – Iceman is the first truly great epic of the modern American theatre, and its legacy is the intimate stripping of the soul which we now take for granted in drama worldwide' Sheridan MorleyThis edition of The Iceman Cometh includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.