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“Write a Dance”: Lazarus Laughed as O'Neill's Dithyramb of the Western Hemisphere
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 October 2010
Extract
Eugene O'Neill pushed his habitual experimentation with theatrical forms toward the establishment of a radically new esthetic in The Great God Brown (1925) and Lazarus Laughed (1926). He groped toward a poetic theatre with religious and ceremonial overtones that involved further visual and aural departures from the accepted norm of Broadway productions. In the first of these plays, O'Neill's mastery of visceral effects continues to cast a spell over spectators in occasional imaginative and skillful productions. But the second remains his least accessible; ever since its first production at the Pasadena Playhouse in April 1928, it has continued to mystify or repel both theatre people and litterateurs.
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References
NOTES
1 Gillette, William H., “Author's Preface,” Sherlock Holmes, (Garden City, N.Y.: Double-day, 1935), p. xix.Google Scholar
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3 They may not have been entirely wrong. O'Neill probably knew of Jig Cook's ideas concerning a projected theatre of “pure space,” — see Jig Cook, pp. 205–6.
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24 Nilla Cook to the author, December 18, 1963. — In a letter to Manuel Komroff (22 March 1926), after requesting translations of the Talmud and the Koran, O'Neill mysteriously announced: “I'm going in very heavily these days for the study of religion along certain definite lines… as a sort of large background for certain work in the future. Am also starting to study ancient Greek…” Sheaffer, Louis, O'Neill; Son and Artist (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), p. 197.Google Scholar Emphasis added.
25 Nilla Cook to the author, August 28, 1974.
26 Nilla Cook to the author, February 5, 1975.
27 Nilla cook to the author, December 17, 1975.
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36 “Certainly, I know of no play like ‘Lazarus’ at all… In short, ‘Lazarus’ is damned far from any category. It has no plot of any sort as one knows plot.” O'Neill to Macgowan, May 14 [1926], “The Theatre We Worked For”: The Letters of Eugene O'Neill to Kenneth Macgowan, Edited by Jackson Byer, with the assistance of Ruth M. Alvarez; With introductory'essays by Travis Bogard (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 112.
37 Nilla Cook to the author, February 5, 1975.
38 Jig Cook. pp. 144–152.
39 Despite Macgowan's co-authorship of Masks and Demons (New York: Harcourt and Brace, 1923). The preface describes the book as “not the work of an authority.” — Apart from a few reports about how well the writing of Lazarus is going, most letters during the relevant period concern Macgowan's and O'Neill's attempts to secure productions in New York, Chicago and Moscow, none of which were realized. “The Theatre We Worked For”, passim.
40 The Gelbs describe O'Neill proposing the placement of a commemorative plaque on the playhouse, and writing an inscription “in a repentant mood.” P. 546
41 Quinn, 2, p. 199, discussing Lazarus in a context of religiosity as varied as ancient Celtic and American transcendentalist, cites a 1925 O'Neill letter.
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44 Whose Laughter he requested from Manuel Komroff on 1 March 1926, along with “anything else you know printed about the spirit of laughter among the Greeks or Ancients of any sort.” Sheaffer, p. 197. Emphasis added.
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46 See above, p. 39 — According to Floyd, Virginia, ed., Eugene O'Neill at Work: Newly Released Ideas for Plays (New York, Ungar, 1981), p. 98Google Scholar, O'Neill “made copious notes on Dionysus.” Although the base incident of the risen Lazarus is from the Gospel of Saint John, O'Neill reported to Macgowan to have removed a great deal from the manuscript “that reminded one of a regular Biblical play — a bad start for Laz.” “The Theatre We Worked For,” p. 142.
47 All quotations in this paragraph are from Waters, pp. 235–240.
48 “The Theatre We Worked For,” p. 146.