Performing O'Neill: Conversations with Actors and Directors. By Yvonne Shafer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000; pp. 259. $24.95 hardcover

Extract

This volume is primarily a collection of eleven interviews with distinguished actors, directors, and producers who have brought Eugene O'Neill to the stage. In addition to interviews with James Earl Jones, Jane Alexander, Michael Kahn, Jason Robards, Theodore Mann, Arvin Brown, Len Cariou, Theresa Wright, Gloria Foster, Edward Petherbridge, and Fritz Weaver, Yvonne Shafer contributes a seventy-page introduction describing the work of earlier actors and directors that enables the book to span the entire production history of Eugene O'Neill's plays on the professional stage. This perspective makes a valuable contribution to O'Neill studies, which is heavily concentrated on the plays as literary texts.