I nearly forgot I said this is a place to discuss, books, plays and short stories.  As long as I’m finally getting around to plays, I’d like to start out with a favorite: A Moon for the Misbegotten.

Every person has life-changing experiences.  Some of these are obvious turning points like marriage or the death of a parent, some are not.  One of mine was a play I saw at age fifteen, a modern drama.  At fifteen, I couldn’t say why I identified with the characters or why it moved me so (other than it was a great performance) but the work and the author got under my skin for the rest of my adolescence.  It is still a singular piece though now I understand it a bit more.  It was written by Eugene O’Neill and it’s called “A Moon for the Misbegotten.”

Few people outside of the theatrical world understand the impact of O’Neill but, to put it simply, he made American Drama human.  Theatrical plays written in this country before O’Neill were either broad comedies or melodramas.   I’m sure they were lots of fun to watch, containing virtuous heroes and dastardly villains but there was nothing an audience member could recognize as their own feeling or experience.   It was all Grand Gesture; no humanity.  Eugene O’Neill changed all that by writing about people, their successes and failures, their generosity, anger and flaws.  And he wrote about his family, usually in code because his father was well-known and because they all had secrets.   Secrets he needed to tell.

These days, the O’Neills would be described as a dysfunctional family because the males had a thirst for booze and the mother was hooked on morphine.  Back and forth the four of them went for years in a tango of substance abuse.   From functional use, to collapse, through withdrawal, white-knuckle abstinence, fights, slips and relapses the four of them went, trying, crying, fighting and lashing out at each other when they weren’t hanging onto hope and affection.  Of the four O’Neills, the playwright and his mother eventually found a measure of sobriety (Years before the creation of the 12-step programs, O’Neill’s mother got well by treating her addiction was part of a crisis of faith.  It was an amazing insight.) and the father’s drinking mostly impaired his personal life.  Eugene’s elder brother Jamie, on the other hand, never really grew up or gained independence, never really found sobriety and died in an insane asylum, of cirrhosis and the DTs at age 45.  Eugene grieved for all of his family and wrote most directly of their lives in “A Long Day’s Journey into Night.”  But even that great play could not release him from thoughts of Jaime.

Eugene loved his brother’s charisma and kindness as much as he hated what his brother became whenever Jamie picked up the bottle and he hated Jaimie’s death.  So, in his last produced play, O’Neill re-wrote Jamie’s ending.  He couldn’t save his brother from alcoholism or an early death (he wasn’t writing fantasy) but instead of a strait jacket and blindness, Eugene gave his brother a wistful romance with a woman who understood the damage of demons and granted Jamie the love and peace he needed as well as the grace of redemption.

Redemption.  It’s a big concept, central to Christianity and creative writers and Eugene O’Neill was both (well, he was a failed Catholic).  Redemption is what so many of us need, to feel forgiven and loved despite our past errors and sins.  It’s a new lease on life and a pardon we don’t deserve.  Redemption and peace is what O’Neill grants his brother in that play and it moved me although I knew none of the back story at the time.  Now that I understand it more, the technical achievement moves me still.  These days, someone like the playwright O’Neill would have a plethora of information and support available if he needed help resolving the confusing conflicts he had about family.  These days there would be rehabs and half-way houses and kind people discussing detachment and enabling.  Without any help, Eugene O’Neill synthesized his experience and pain and created a solution that not only gave him some peace for a lost brother; he made that brother immortal.

My family did not match the haunted O’Neills, although we had our ups and downs, as James Goldman wrote in “A Lion in Winter”.  But Eugene O’Neill’s plays spoke to me when I had trouble understanding my folks and wished for a life with less drama.   And that is ultimately what modern creative work is supposed to do. It creates a vision of  the human experience and through viewing, gives the audience a greater understanding of self.  And if that redeems us or helps us to act a little better in the future, so much the better.  That’s Modern Drama, courtesy of Eugene O’Neill.