Mansions in Need of Repair

WHILE WRITING More Stately Mansions, Eugene O'Neill noted: "Unfinished Work This script to be destroyed in case of my death?" Since O'Neill relied heavily on revision and painstaking editing, the request is understandable. He would rather have seen his work fed to the flames than performed before it was ready for the stage.

O'Neill died before he could finish his work, leaving a typescript in its formative stages that somehow found its way into a box of papers sent to the O'Neill collection at Yale. The play is far too long (O'Neill marked over half the original typescript for deletion), the plot is often contrived, and the characterizations are confused and inconsistent beyond credibility. The play involves the relationship between Simon, a merchant being destroyed by wealth and success, and the two women in his life--his mother (Deborah) and his wife (Sara). It almost goes without saying that both are possessive and determined to win his favor, and that he is torn between them. The idea isn't terribly original, but, in the hands of a playwright of O'Neill's talent, the potential for good psychodrama is there. Unfortunately O'Neill never had a chance to finishMansions, and in the third (and final) draft he still seems to be struggling to put on paper the characters he envisioned. The play is full of redundant, unfocused monologues that add nothing to our understanding of his characters and would have been trimmed in a later, more polished version.

As it happens, O'Neill's fears wee justified; the play was presented on Broadway and is now being revived at the Loeb. Director Kathy Placzek has tried to improve the script by eliminating superfluous speeches and undeveloped sub-themes. Her cuts are sound and exceptionaly smooth, but the play needs more mending than a director can provide.

KATHY PLACZEK could not have altered the abrupt and implausible reversals in attitude that the three family members display. Nor could she have removed certain elements of the plot that seem ludicrous. For example, shortly after Deborah has resolved never to communicate with Simon again, considering him lost to his common Irish biddy, she is forced by financial hardship to ask his charity. She does so only after great deliberation, and then almost instantaneously decides to become a loving mother-in-law as well. This unnatural, almost absurd changes of heart towards Sara makes Deborah's subsequent rapport with her hard to swallow.

Once the dimensions of the love triangle are established, the struggle for Simon--who is half crazed by ambition and a desire to regain childhood--drags on for a whole act. The tug of war consists of monotonous arguments between Sara and Deborah as to who's stronger and more loving. Just when one of the ladies seems about to edge out the competition, Simon's indecision changes the tide of battle. Frankly, he's not worth the fuss.

It would be unfair to blame Maggie Brenner (Deborah), Ann Varley (Sara), or Michael Gury (Simon) for problems that are so obviously the fault of the script. Lines like "There's love in me, too, enough love to destroy all the greed in the world" are bound to make the most subtle, provocative actor or actress sound silly. Maggie Brenner is effective as the jealous, rapidly aging mother who combats loneliness by occasional flights into a world of make-believe. These moments of fanciful imagination would be hard to sustain were they not presented with delicacy and poise. Sometimes Deborah's speeches bog down, though, and she would do well to recite some of the long ones a shade faster.

Michael Gury seems somewhat stiff in the opening act, perhaps because he is trying to assume the reserved manners of the nineteenth century gentleman. His portrayal of Simon as a greedy, emotionally disturbed young man is otherwise as precise as the script allows. It's bothersome that we're never given more than a simplistic, pseudoFreudian explanation for his yearning to return to mother and childhood. His ambivalent desire for escape is so key to the movement of the play that it should have more solid roots. Ann Varley is wellcast in the part of the young wife. Her Irish brogue doesn't sound particularly authentic, but she usually injects sorely needed energy into her scense.

THE TECHNICAL aspects of the show are consistently impressive. Lindsay Davis's costumes are very becoming and fit well. The lighting, engineered by Chris Taylor, often adds considerably to the mood of a scene. Joe Mobilia has designed flexible sets, including a very impressive summer house, that never dominate the scene or interfere with staging.

The failures of More Stately Mansions are brought to light by comparison with another O'Neill play that examines family interrelationships--A Long Day's Journey Into Night. In that play the characters are just as complex, but their relationships are consistent and well-defined. And the web O'Neill weaves there is far more delicate than in More Stately Mansions, where virtually every nuance is exposed in tedious dialogue. Most important, we know and understand the Tyrones much better, and therefore sympathize with the problems that beset their family.

For the biographer or student of O'Neill's drama it's lucky that his order was never carried out, for the manuscripts provide insight into themes that concerned one of America's greatest playwrights. Fortunately Yale has preserved many such manuscripts. But O'Neill never lived to finish More Stately Mansions and asked, in effect, that the play not be performed in its present form. Here, the author turned out to be the best judge of his work and his request should be honored. More Stately Mansions belongs in a library, not on stage.