The Glencairn Plays

Suddenly in love with Eugene O'Neill. Or The Wooster Group/New York City Players' version of him. Clunky words, cockney accents, spat out mechanically, like acting robots on a metal pipe scaffolding stage. Couplers and tubes. Sea shanties and dreams of solid land.

I always thought O'Neill's plays were a little thin compared to Chechov's or Ibsen's, slightly odd with his characters, these unlikeable people out of pulp novels or something. And the language always seemed contrived and a little embarrassing to me with the Emperor Jones's "sho' has!" and all that. But here they just put that up front, read it out like words on a page, and let the feelings underneath those words just sit there, jabbing you.

A bit in the first play (Moon of the Caribbees?) where a sailor breaks a bottle and the glass gets shattered all over the ship deck and they just walk on it. And it never gets cleaned up and then in the second one (The Long Voyage Home), another lug of a sailor has an accident and dies in agony in his bunk and then they just drag him shirtless over the glass. Those sharp edges seem to be what's underneath there. Forget complex psychology or metaphors. The dull ache of being on a ship or trying to sell alcohol to a bunch of drunken sailors or being the woman tossed around the bar is enough as it is.