By BROOKS ATKINSON

Although “The Great God Brown” was originally produced in 1926, it remains as avant-garde as any play of the century.  Beckett and lonesco have gone no further afield.

In 1926 Eugene O’Neill was in the midst of an experimental period when he was trying to create a technique that would express what lies beneath the surface of life as well as what everyone can see.  To express, also, the different appearances one person can have in the presence of other persons.

In form there is nothing today more modern than “the Great God Brown.”  In content, it remains the essence of O’Neill – loneliness, brooding on the meaning of life, a yearning for identity, love and recognition.

The impression of modernity derives in large part from the brilliance of the production that opened last evening at the Coronet.  Stuart Vaughan, artistic director of the Phoenix Theatre, has staged a superb performance with actors who compose the nucleus of the Phoenix permanent company.  (Since the Phoenix Theatre in Second Avenue is now tenanted by “Once Upon a Mattress,” the Phoenix troupe has moved uptown for its opening production of the season.  The organization is the same; it happens to be temporarily away from home.)

The journey has been profitable for the subscribers as well as the Phoenix.  Given an exceedingly difficult script with an ambiguous third act, Mr. Vaughan has set a spectral mood with Will Steven Armstrong’s scenery and David Amram’s weird score but chiefly by means of some admirable actors.  Fritz Weaver, Robert Lansing, Nan Martin and Gerry Jedd will probably never have more elusive characters to play.  If they do, they will never play them more eloquently.

“The Great God Brown” is O’Neill’s drama of masks.  When Dion Anthony wears his society mask, Margaret loves him, and so does his chum Billy Brown.  But the unmasked Dion is a different character – rebellious, searching, melancholy, lost.  When he is without his mask, Margaret is terrified.

This notion of multiple personalities in a single character is the entrance into a fascinating fantasy.  It is the device O’Neill used to explore the dark labyrinth of life in which we are all strangers, reaching out toward one another but never really meeting.

For two acts, “The Great God Brown” is vividly unearthly.  The changing, painful relationships among the characters are both logical and illuminating.  They do explain, in O’Neill’s terms, why people suffer.  But it seems to this theatregoer that the third act goes off the deep end.  The complexity of the relationship becomes more mathematical than human; and the final tragedy is a battle of wraiths.  The blood is drained out of the conclusion.

Whether “The Great god Brown” is or is not entirely successful is a pedantic problem.  Why haggle over degrees of perfection?  For the dramatic conception is bold and original; and some of the writing has that haunting aspiration characteristic of O’Neill when he was struggling to explain the inexplicable.  In the theatre his power of introspection is magnetic.

And the incantation of the Phoenix performance is reason enough for rejoicing.  Mr. Weaver, winding his way through the bitter moods of Dion; Mr. Lansing, beginning quietly as Billy Brown, but gathering force as he goes along and finally duplicating the passionate desperation of Dion; Miss Jedd, plain and compassionate as Cybel, understanding without taking pride in understanding; Miss Martin, anxious, loving, alert, patient, uneasy as the wife and mother – these are brilliant portraits of difficult characters.

Unfortunately, most of the speaking is in too low a key.  If the actors are difficult to hear in the front rows, they must be totally unintelligible farther from the stage.  It would be a pity not to correct this trouble quickly and totally.  For in the visualization of O’Neill’s thesis, in tonal emphases and sureness of outline this is the Phoenix’ finest production.

Avant-garde of 1926 as avant-garde today.  O’Neill was writing about ideas that are permanent.