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The Wooster Group and Elizabeth LeCompte have invited Richard Maxwell of New York City Players to direct three of Eugene O'Neill's early "Glencairn" plays-Bound East for Cardiff(1914), The Long Voyage Home (1917), and The Moon of the Caribbees (1918)-combining his company with The Wooster Group.
EARLY PLAYS takes O'Neill's tales of sailors on and off the ocean as a point of departure to explore themes of longing and eternity. The production realizes O'Neill's beautifully romantic text in a sparse, modern, yet still mythic place. Dark episodes showing the underside of turn-of-the-century maritime life-brawls, dances, and carousing-are threaded together with original songs composed by Maxwell.
The EARLY PLAYS company includes Wooster Group members and associates Enver Chakartash, Ari Fliakos, Teresa Hartmann, Bozkurt Karasu, Bobby McElver, Kaneza Schaal, Andrew Schneider, and Kate Valk and New York City Players Lakpa Bhutia, Keith Connolly, Alex Delinois, Nicholas Elliott, Jim Fletcher, Kevin Hurley, and Brian Mendes.
St. Ann's Warehouse presents the world premiere of EARLY PLAYS February 15 - March 11, 2012.
I was disappointed in this production, but the early O'Neill scripts are so terribly dated and inconsequential that perhaps no director could bring them alive. The decision to have actors read the lines neutrally seemed an interesting experiment, but one that probably should not have survived the rehearsal process. Just one man's opinion. I wrote a review on my blog http://www.stephensossaman.com/2012/02/theatre-review-oneills-the-early-plays/
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