IN THIS ISSUE:

• Focus on The Hairy Ape:
   
  • Michael Hinden on O'Neill's treatment of Nietzschean myth
     
  • Virginia Floyd on the play's theme and its precursors
     
  • Ann D. Hughes on Biblical allusions in the play
     
  • Horst Frenz on the first three European productions
     
• Activities at O'Neill homes, east and west
   
• The resurrection of the Provincetown Playhouse
   
• Comments on recent productions:
   
  • Paul Voelker on Moon for the Misbegotten in Minnesota
     
  • Winifred Frazer on Desire Under the Elms in Florida
     
  • The Emperor Jones in New York City
     
  • The Hairy Ape at Tao House
     
  • Ah, Wilderness! and Long Day's Journey in Milwaukee
     
• Announcements, abstracts, notes and queries
   
• Persons represented in this issue

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EDITOR'S FOREWORD

It has been a gratifying experience to guide the Eugene O'Neill Newsletter through its first full year of existence. The index to Volume I at the end of this issue suggests the breadth of material its pages have included, thanks to the diligence of its dedicated readers. The subscription list continues to grow rapidly and now includes, in addition to the United States, individual and institutional subscribers in Canada, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Sweden and West Germany. Doubtless, there are many more who might wish to receive it and submit material for its pages if they but knew of its existence; and so I urge all who have found the Newsletter's first four issues interesting and valuable to tell friends, theatres and libraries of its availability.

The current issue continues the short-and-long blend that has pleased a number of correspondents: notes on activities, publications and performances of interest to O'Neillians; three lucid (though perhaps not completely complementary) studies of The Hairy Ape; and a report on the first performances of that play in three European capitals.

It remains my hope that contributions to the Newsletter will be equally divided between scholars and theatre people. Accordingly, the next issue (for which material should be submitted by mid-March) will concentrate on O'Neill's plays in performance. I welcome reviews of recent productions, memories of past ones, and notes by actors, designers and directors who have confronted the works of O'Neill head-on in the playhouse. The issue will include detailed reviews of the Quintero-Robards production of A Touch of the Poet in New York City and the Long Wharf program of sea plays in New Haven, and a previously-promised survey of critical reactions to the 1976 Broadway production of Anna Christie and to Liv Ullmann's performance as Anna.

The May issue will also feature essays by Kristin Morrison ("Conrad and O'Neill as Playwrights of the Sea") and James A. Robinson ("Christianity and All God's Chillun Got Wings"). While all submissions for May will be read with a sympathetic eye, the eye will look with greatest favor on responses to the plays of O'Neill in performance. Brush off your theatrical memories, articulate them in a form that blends fervor with succinctness, and send them along. We'll all be the richer for sharing them.

I am grateful to the many friends of O'Neill who have sent words of encouragement and have enriched the first volume of the Newsletter with their thoughtful notes and essays. The Newsletter seems to have answered a need, and it will continue to try to justify the respect of its many well-wishers. A happy 1978 to you all: --F. W.

Copyright © 1978 by THE EUGENE O'NEILL NEWSLETTER. Copyright © 2011 by Harley J. Hammerman.