6 Hours of Eugene O'Neill, 6 Questions
11-07-17
AT FIRST, I KIND of wanted to kill Nathan, the house manager at the David Greenspan solo version of “Strange Interlude.” Really, even a British accent (American women’s all-time favorite, since 1777 or so) can be annoying if the person behind it is telling you what to do, where to go and what horrible consequences will befall those who disobey. But I soon relaxed and saw his side of it. If you’re shepherding scores of theatergoers through a six-hour performance in nine scenes on three different stages, with two tight (10-minute) intermissions and a half-hour dinner break, you do need to maintain order.
Who is David Greenspan?
A singular talent. No devoted New York theater maven would have to ask. Don’t look for him on Broadway; he’s only done that once -- in the 2009 revival of “The Royal Family” – and he played the butler. But Off Broadway he’s been turning impressing critics and winning awards (he has a roomful of Obies) for more than a quarter-century. Think “The Patsy,” “Some Men” or his Drama Desk Award-nominated turn in the mid-1990s revival of “The Boys in the Band.” I was a latecomer to his fan club, seeing him for the first time in CSC’s “Orlando” in 2010. Knocked my socks off.
What is “Strange Interlude”?
Eugene O’Neill’s nine-act (seriously) melodrama about a young New England woman (Nina) whose true love (Gordon) dies in battle in World War I and the life she builds, rather haphazardly, in the decades afterward. The major players in her life are Sam, the man she marries; Ned, the man whose baby she has while married to Sam; Sam’s mother, who secretly explains to Nina that insanity runs in Sam’s family (thus, the need for a surrogate); the son, whom she names Gordon; and a mild-mannered writer friend almost always referred to as “good old Charlie.” The play, which is heavy on soliloquies and asides and was considered shocking because of the abortion and extramarital-sex plot points. “Strange Interlude” opened on Broadway in 1928, the year O’Neill turned 40, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (his second). Lynn Fontanne starred as Nina.
What’s the theater group’s story?
The Transport Group, a Drama Desk Award-winning nonprofit Off Broadway company, was founded in 2001. Its revivals and original productions have included William Inge’s “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs,” Michael John LaChiusa’s “Queen of the Mist” and “Hello Again,” and Douglas Carter Beane's “Lysistrata Jones.” The Transport Group's revival of "The Boys in the Band" was much talked about because the audience seemed to be sitting in the living room, next to the boys.
Isn’t the Greenspan solo show just a big theatrical gimmick?
It might have been, if anyone lesser than Greenspan and his director, Jack Cummings III, were in charge. The New York Times called it “storytelling at its purest” and “an illuminating interpretation” that is both “faithful and irreverent.” Vulture called it, among other things, “utterly hypnotic, intermittently brilliant” and “proof of O’Neill’s genius.”
So, would it be worth it just for O'Neill's words?
Yes and no. Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding, "Strange Interlude" is kind of a soap opera. But in the middle of the family curses, the abortions, the writing blocks and the pre-DNA-testing paternity mysteries, there is the playwright's clarion voice. The man wrote lines that you could stop and think about for days: "This talk of happiness seems to me extraneous." "What a perfect lover he would make for one's old age!" "I kissed her once. Her lips were cold." "No face can afford intense grief." "What have the living to do with the dead?"
Is it really six hours long?
The night I attended, it started at 5 p.m. and we got out at approximately 10:30 p.m., so perhaps the breaks didn’t have to be timed down to the last second with such a frenzy.
“Strange Interlude,” Irondale Center, 215 South Oxford Street, Fort Greene, Brooklyn; transportgroup.org. 6 hours (more or less). Limited run. Through Nov. 18.
