Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)O'Neill doesn't get much representation these days. Staging his plays isn't always practical. This is a really excellent video version of the play that was produced for Connecticut public television. The cast, including Joan Hackett, Roberta Maxwell, Bruce Davison and Jeffrey DeMunn is really excellent. They breathe such natural life into these supertragic, archetypal, and arguably over-Freudian, characters that you really understand why this is a magnificent tragedy and not just some soap opera. The settings are good and the staging takes advantage of the medium with scene transitions that wouldn't have been possible on stage, but would no doubt have gladdened O'Neill's heart, and give further power to his already lavish dramatic design.
Unfortunately, this IS produced for public television, and there is no attempt to hide the fact. The play is presented in a series of "Episodes," with "scenes from last time" and an opening of waves on cliffs that can not fail to remind viewers of the series "Dark Shadows." But the score by Maurice Jarre is perfect and evocative throughout the production. There is
also a clinching review/discussion/commentary at the end of each episode by, for some reason, Erich Segal. I avoided this like the plague.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra (Broadway Theatre Archive) (1978)
This expressionistic work is Eugene O'Neill's classic American drama of love, revenge, murder and suicide. Set against the backdrop of a small New England town in the post-Civil War era, O'Neill's saga of family discord fueled by psychological undercurrents is from Aeschylus' "The Oresteia." The end result is one of the American theatre's most shattering epic works.
