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"There is a feeling around, or I'm mistaken, of fate. Kismet, the negative fate; not in the Greek sense. . . . It's struck me as time goes on, how something funny, even farcical, can suddenly without any apparent reason, break up into something gloomy and tragic. ... A sort of unfair non sequitur, as though events, as though life, were being manipulated just to confuse us. I think I'm aware of comedy more than I ever was before; a big kind of comedy that doesn't stay funny very long. I've made some use of it in The Iceman. The first act is hilarious comedy, think, but then some people may not even laugh. At any rate, the comedy breaks up and the tragedy comes on. . . ."
Then he added: "I'm happier now than
I've ever been—I couldn't ever be negative about life. On that score, you've got to decide YES or NO. And I'll always say YES. Yes, I'm happy."
The Artist. Both his new play and his return raised an inevitable question: Is Eugene O'Neill the great dramatist many people have long considered him? The harder-minded critics generally agreed: a master craftsman of the theater—yes; a great dramatist—no.
O'Neill does not seem, to be a man of great, searching or original intelligence. And however vivid his emotions and intuitions as a dramatic poet, he generally lacks the ability to stand aside from them and give them final hardness, clearness, earthiness, eloquence. Instead, he swims the crests of their waves; and, sometimes, he drowns in them. He is a wonderful contriver of moods. But the moods are never reflected against a firm intelligence; they seem, rather, to move and expand for their own sakes, and characters and ideas, used as mere colorings for mood, shift for themselves as best they can.
That O'Neill is a poet is evident in almost any line he has written. That he lacks the ultimate (and primary) requirement of a great poet (to arrange words in eloquent and unimprovable order and beauty) is equally evident in the same lines. Lacking deep perception of real people, O'Neill constantly scores his points, and gets his effects, by external tricks.
But as a playwright, O'Neill remains the greatest master of theater the U.S. has ever produced. He is a marvelous craftsman, and one of the most high-minded who has ever worked. If he often undertakes too much, that is far better than undertaking too little. This habitual exorbitance goes far towards accounting for the compelling tone which resounds through all of O'Neill's work like the ringing of red iron on an anvil. This magnificent — Ruth Gilbert, Dudley Digges, Jeanne Cagney. cent tone is the best and most constant quality in O'Neill's writing. It is the voice of the spirit of the man himself; and nobody who hears that voice can question the ardent nobility of the spirit.
* Thenceforth the curtain would rise on The Iceman at 5:30. The purpose of the earlier curtain: to give reviewers more time to collect their dazed impressions.
The Chinese character Tao symbolizes The Right Way of Life.
Outstanding in the Theatre Guild's generally good production were Robert Edmond Jones's sets.