
O Pioneer!
Eugene O’Neill has been heralded as the father of American theater since at least 1962. That year, Arthur and Barbara Gelb’s O’Neill championed the Irish American playwright as a hero and crowned Long Day’s Journey into Night the greatest American play—and also the most autobiographical.
There’s truth here. Long Day’s Journey alchemizes O’Neill’s tormented childhood—his hack-actor father, his junkie mother, his ne’er-do-well brother—dragging the audience through one August day and night in 1912 until the terrible yet satisfying end. But O’Neill is not just a hero, and his best play not just