THE THEATRE

Greece in New England

At four p.m. one afternoon last week, a crowd of people who were not quite sure how to dress for the occasion bustled into the neo-Andalusian splendor of Manhattan's Guild Theatre. They were going to see a Eugene O'Neill play--an important one. The play, Mourning Becomes Electra, would run continuously with an hour's intermission for dinner, would last five hours.

When coats were stowed under seats, house lights extinguished, the audience was shown the exterior of a large New England home, a portico of deathly paleness only partially masking the building's sepulchral grey face. Here dwell the Mannons. With swift, sure strokes a long story is told.

Even before they went out to dinner, it was fairly obvious to first-afternooners that Playwright O'Neill has moved Greece to New England. Those who knew their Euripides were quick to detect a parallel between Mourning Becomes Electra and the classic tragedy, recalled how Agamemnon, returning from the Trojan War, was killed by his wife (Clytemnestra), how the long-lost son Orestes finally killed his mother's lover and his mother at the instigation of Elektra.

Significant is the O'Neill treatment of the theme: simple, straightforward. Prime point of criticism of Mourning Becomes Electra is its bareness. Six hours is a long time to have to watch a family obliterate itself.

Playwright O'Neill, an experimenter at heart, seldom uses exactly the same method twice. He is voracious. Life, and life as portrayed in the theatre, is a business that must be attacked on many fronts. The record of Playwright O'Neill easily establishes him as the nation's greatest. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.