By HOWARD TAUBMAN

Early in 1928 two of Eugene O’Neill’s plays opened on Broadway, “Marco Millions” with Alfred Lunt as Marco Polo, the eternal, go-getting Philistine, expired after three weeks.  “Strange Interlude,” with Lynn Fontanne as Nina Leeds, the neurotic female who dominates a variety of men, ran 17 months.

Since it is always open season for second-guessing the past, it is a fair question to ask how wise and just was the public of the twenties in its evaluation of the two plays.

By great good luck we are in a position to consider the two O’Neill plays from the perspective of the theater as well as the printed page.  Last March the Actors Studio Theater began its formal activities with a production of “Strange Interlude.”  Now the Repertory Theater of Lincoln Center has mounted a colorful revival of “Marco Millions” as the second production of its first season in the inviting new ANTA Washington Square Theater.

My first conclusion is that “Marco Millions” is a good deal more interesting than a meager three-wee run would suggest and the “Strange Interlude” is less impressive than its thundering success in 1928 would imply.

My second observation is that neither work ranks with the best of O’Neill:  “Mourning Becomes Electra,” “The Iceman Cometh” and Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

My third finding is the “Marco Millions” has dated much less than “Strange Interlude.”

To make these judgments today is not to smirk patronizingly at the twenties.  Audiences then had their reasons and excuses for reacting as they did.  “Marco Millions,” which I did not get to see, was handicapped, we have been told, by a production that cut and marred the play.  “Strange Interlude,” which I did see, was dazzlingly produced and performed.

“Strange Interlude,” moreover, was the vogue drama of 1928 and 1929.  Its inordinate nine-act length, which was supposed to be a handicap, turned out to be an asset.  It became chi-chi to attend a performance that began at cocktail time and provided for a long dinner intermission.  If you want a notion of how fashionable, some of the swells at the opening wore street clothes for the first half and returned in dinner jackets and evening gowns fort the second.

Both plays are undermined by weakness of characterization.  The deficiency is more harmful to “Strange Interlude,” for its entire purpose is to probe into the secret corners of human hearts.  “Marco Millions” mounts a blunderbuss of an attack against the materialism of the West and does not pretend to be a searching development of character.

As a gargantuan dramatic exercise in a species of psychoanalysis, “Strange Interlude,” it is clear now, is fatally flawed by the incredibility of its central character.  Nina lacks the stature and fascination to be daughter, sweetheart, wife, mother and mistress to so many different men.

The motive O’Neill adduces for her devouring drive – that she never forgave her father or the world for the unfulfillment of her love for a young aviator who was killed – is patently unconvincing.  Nor can one believe, no matter how alluringly Nina is embodied by a Lynn Fontanne or a Geraldine Page, that Sam Evans, the good, foolish husband, Darrell, the passionate, noble lover, and Marsden, the bloodless, constant admirer, behave as anything other than creatures of the playwright’s will.

As for the drama’s advance form, once a famous talking point, it now seems pretentious and archaic.  The asides, which the characters speak to reveal their buried thoughts, are banal and ludicrous, for they tell us nothing not made clear by the action and the normal dialogue.

Yet “Strange Interlude” was worth reviving.  Whatever his failings, O’Neill remains one of our leading playwrights.  A new generation has a right to meet his work on the stage as well as on the printed page, where it is more accessible but not nearly so compelling.  For O’Neill felt, thought and wrote for the stage, not for the library.

The most memorable moment in “Strange Interlude” is a triumph of theater magic.  It comes at the end of the sixth act.  Nina is at the zenith of her power over her three men.  There is a respite from the stresses of their tense relationships.  On the surface all is tranquility, but there is an undercurrent of brooding and contemplation in the men as they surround Nina.  Her unspoken, conquering exultation, heightened by word that still another male, her son, waits for her, enriches a subtle counterpoint of moods expected in irresistible stage motifs.

Once the characters in “Marco Millions” are established, they hardly change.  For a moment Marco as a youth senses, however callowly, a possibility of poetry and beauty.  But he quickly learns to accept the values of men of affairs and transforms himself into a prototype of the noisy, self-satisfied chap on the make, and he remains unchanged despite a last glimpse of inexpressible ecstasy in Princess Kukachin’s yearning eyes.

The Princess and the exemplars of ancient Eastern wisdom, her grandfather, Kublai, the great Khan, and Chu-Yin, the Cathayan sage – also remain largely untransformed.  For “Marco Millions” is preoccupied with satire and spectacle.

The attack on materialistic standards is savage as well as heavy-handed.  What O’Neill said was obvious then as now; it was also pertinent and still is.

In the treatment of an exotic atmosphere “Marco Millions” is evocative.  O’Neill rejoiced in being an alchemist of words, action, setting, costume and music, and in “Marco Millions” he attempted a stage mixture of mood and comment.

But here, alas, as in his finest plays, the impulse of his language to soar was frustrated.  Poetry was not his forte, nor wit.  His intensity of commitment, his courage to dig deeply into human motives and his affinity for the stage were the sources of O’Neill’s strength, and these endure.