The Hairy Ape; Anna Christie; The First Man
by . New York: Boni & Liveright. 1922. 8vo. xii+322 pp. $2.00.
MR. O’NEILL’S view of life is bitter. He delights in sordid episodes. Characters portrayed are weak, irresolute, selfish, or brutal. He knows the theatre, and is skillful in arrangement of situations, with men and women true to instincts and surroundings, speaking as they should. Seldom does he err in dialogue, which usually is natural, direct, and revealing of character. In ’The Emperor Jones’ he portrayed terror so that it was contagious, In ‘ Beyond the Horizon’ his pathos was unaffected. His sense of grim humor is indisputable. He has the gift of flaying satire. His bitterness and hopelessness are almost unrelieved. His tragedy is without the nobility that exalts. Often he brings to mind the unhappy Strindberg. Yet there is to-day no more commanding figure than O’Neill in the American play-house.
The stoker ‘Yank,’ in ’The Hairy Ape.’ exults in strength and stoke-hole life. In his gutter speech he shouts to his mates they are finely differentiated — how they rule the world. Mildred in white, curious about the boiler-room, frightened by Ins ’abysmal brutality’ and foul language, exclaims ’Oh! the filthy beast!' and faints. ’Yank’ swears to get even with her; not as Zola’s Ragu when Fernande in white ventures into the foundry; ‘Yank’ would kill Mildred. There is no place for him in the city; even the I. W. W. reject him. At the Zoo he talks as a pal to the gorilla, frees him, and is slain by him. This powerful play is somewhat marred by repetition of phrases. Is not the ending for the Grand ‘ Guignol?
A play of a higher order is ‘Anna Christie.’ Mr. O’Neill was once, it is said, a seafarer, but his sea is not the sea of Melville, Whitman, Hugo, or Swinburne; it is ’dat ole davil, sea,’as Chris, the bargeman, keeps saying. His daughter, Anna, meeting him after long absence, is loved by the bold Burke. Loving him, she confesses her life of shame in the West. Enraged at first, he accepts it, for his rough love prevails. ' Fog, fog, fog, all bloody time,’says Chris, looking out in the night; ‘you can’t see where you was going, no. Only dat ole davil, sea — she knows!’ With this symbolic line the curtain falls.
In ‘The First Man,’a study of male selfishness and small-town meanness, an anthropologist is going to Asia. His children died; he does not wish another to distract him and his devoted wife from research work. She longs for one and is delivered — in a daring and painful scene, off stage. The mother dies; the child lives. The father hates it. His hatred confirms outrageous suspicions. Knowing the slandering, he proudly asserts his fatherhood. PHILIP HALE.