Anna Christie Eugene O'Neill 9781517135706 Books
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Anna Christie Eugene O'NEILL (1888 - 1953)
Eugene O'Neill's drama Anna Christie was first produced on Broadway in 1921 and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. It focuses on three main characters Chris Christopherson, a Swedish captain of a coal barge and longtime seaman, his daughter Anna, who has grown up separated from her father on a Minnesota farm, and Mat Burke, an Irish stoker who works on steamships. At the beginning of the play Chris and Anna are reunited after fifteen years apart. Anna comes to live on her father's coal barge, but hides the secret of her past from him. When she meets Mat after an accident in the fog, they almost immediately fall in love - but Anna finds that forging a new future will not be easy.
Anna Christie Eugene O'Neill 9781517135706 Books
Early in his career, Nobel Prize-winning American playwright Eugene O’Neill wrote many plays about the sea and sailing life. Later on he became better known for serious psychological dramas about dysfunctional families. Anna Christie, first performed in 1921, might be thought of as the turning point where those two phases of his career intersect. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, and is generally considered to be one of O’Neill’s best works.The play takes place around 1910 and opens at a waterfront bar in New York City. The postman gives the bartender a letter addressed to one of the saloon’s regular patrons, who arrives soon after to receive it. Chris Christopherson is a Swedish immigrant and the captain of a coal barge. The letter informs him that his daughter Anna, whom he abandoned at a young age for life at sea, will be coming to visit him in New York. Christopherson is delighted at the idea of seeing his daughter again after all these years, but filled with trepidation as to how she will respond to him and whether he will live up to her expectations. His own expectations, meanwhile, are unrealistically high. Having only known his daughter as a little girl, he expects her to be the perfect, innocent young woman, destined to be a respectable farmer’s wife. Above all, he wants her to have nothing to do with a live on the water. With an attitude of maritime mysticism, he blames the sea for all the trouble in his life and personifies it as the devil. When he finally meets Anna, it is revealed that she has not led the innocent life he dreamed for her. In order to survive, she has had to resort to less reputable means of making her way in the world. How will her past affect her relationships with the men in her life, and will the sea finally get her in the end?
O’Neill’s depiction of lower and working class characters was revolutionary for his time, though that may be difficult for today’s readers to appreciate. Prior to the 20th century, the dramatic stage was reserved for tales of the rich and royal, whereas nowadays anything goes on stage and screen, and all walks of life are represented. O’Neill’s characters and situations would have seemed crude and harsh to the theater-going public of a century ago, and even today the grittiness of his realism and the bleakness of his outlook can be jarring. His dialogue is authentically faithful to the street slang and international accents of the waterfront dives and coal barge cabins in which the story is set. O’Neill, who worked for years as a sailor and drank heavily, would have been familiar with this world. His plays have the feeling of sketches from life, like the realist paintings of the Ashcan School.
There’s an undercurrent of feminism in the play, as Anna is an independent woman who can provide for herself and even scorns men as the cause of all the problems in her life. This feminist stance is not sustained throughout, but it’s still pretty forward for American literature of the 1920s, and the role of Anna is one of the great meaty stage roles for female performers. This play was no doubt groundbreaking for its day, but a century later the plot comes across as a bit predictable, perhaps because so many unrelated films have since been built upon a similar template.
In reading this book it’s not hard to imagine yourself in the audience, or being right there in the bar with Anna and Chris. Not every playwright’s work translates well into printed form, but O’Neill is one dramatist whose writing really leaps off the page for a great reading experience.
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Tags : Anna Christie [Eugene O'Neill] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>Anna Christie</b> <b>Eugene O'NEILL (1888 - 1953)</b> Eugene O'Neill's drama Anna Christie was first produced on Broadway in 1921 and received the Pulitzer Prize in 1922. It focuses on three main characters: Chris Christopherson,Eugene O'Neill,Anna Christie,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1517135702,Drama,Drama General,General,Plays,Plays Drama
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Anna Christie Eugene O'Neill 9781517135706 Books Reviews
... in staging Eugene O'Neil's 1920 drama "Anna Christie" is that it's a corny, dated melodrama. On the other hand, it's one of the best corny, dated melodramas in the repertoire. The language is undercooked. The central character Anna -- not Magdalena but close, a ruined woman of virtue -- is no longer plausible to psychologically sophisticated audiences. The drunken Swede, her father, with his vaudeville accent, and the roister-boister Irish sailor, her lover, with his brogue, are by now such overdrawn stereotypes that a modern viewer/reader will need to chuckle indulgently at the naivete of the American theater just ninety years ago. And then -- shades of Hell for a director in 2011! -- the play has a happy ending!
Any temptation to update the drama and pop the corn has to be resisted. "Anna Christie" is a period piece -- far more so than a Shakespeare comedy -- utterly time- and culture-bound. It's a porthole through which to view the mentality of America in its pre-modern rusticity. It needs to be corny because America in 1920 was all corn. It wants to be a melodrama because only melodrama seemed real to Americans then ... and I'm not sure much has changed in the worldview of Americans since. In short, dear director/producer, don't fight it! Play it as it is.
Perhaps that's why the 1930 adaptation of "Anna Christie" as a film was so paradigmatically perfect. It starred two veteran vaudeville exaggerators, George Marion as the sodden sailor father and Marie Dressler as his tramp trollop, along with Greta Garbo in her 'talkie' debut. Not only did Garbo come naturally to her Swedish accent but her human instincts were pure melodrama. The 'Magdalena' role of Anna Christie suited her perfectly because, I think, she "believed" in the archetype. Film-making in 1930, like the stage in 1920, was less than a generation past vaudeville, just emerging from the bombast and bathos of 19th Century theatrics. The script, the dramaturgy, the cinematography, and the acting styles are 'all of a piece.' Once again, dear viewer, don't fight it! Take it as it is!
A very quick read and engaging.
Brilliant play, of course. It's Eugene O'Neill. The print is very good to use as a script too. I'd suggest this printed version.
Nice, large type. Some breaks between lines missing. Stage directions not really visually separated, italics would have helped.
Fast read covering human pain , betrayal, finally forgiveness and acceptance. Not wrapped up with a happy ending, but with hope.
I didn't know of this O'Neill play. It's interesting to see how he wrote earlier in his career. The plot's simple and rather predictable, still it's got some historical significance. I got to see how a "dishonorable" women was treated before WWI and that forgiveness from men was hard to "earn."
Early in his career, Nobel Prize-winning American playwright Eugene O’Neill wrote many plays about the sea and sailing life. Later on he became better known for serious psychological dramas about dysfunctional families. Anna Christie, first performed in 1921, might be thought of as the turning point where those two phases of his career intersect. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922, and is generally considered to be one of O’Neill’s best works.
The play takes place around 1910 and opens at a waterfront bar in New York City. The postman gives the bartender a letter addressed to one of the saloon’s regular patrons, who arrives soon after to receive it. Chris Christopherson is a Swedish immigrant and the captain of a coal barge. The letter informs him that his daughter Anna, whom he abandoned at a young age for life at sea, will be coming to visit him in New York. Christopherson is delighted at the idea of seeing his daughter again after all these years, but filled with trepidation as to how she will respond to him and whether he will live up to her expectations. His own expectations, meanwhile, are unrealistically high. Having only known his daughter as a little girl, he expects her to be the perfect, innocent young woman, destined to be a respectable farmer’s wife. Above all, he wants her to have nothing to do with a live on the water. With an attitude of maritime mysticism, he blames the sea for all the trouble in his life and personifies it as the devil. When he finally meets Anna, it is revealed that she has not led the innocent life he dreamed for her. In order to survive, she has had to resort to less reputable means of making her way in the world. How will her past affect her relationships with the men in her life, and will the sea finally get her in the end?
O’Neill’s depiction of lower and working class characters was revolutionary for his time, though that may be difficult for today’s readers to appreciate. Prior to the 20th century, the dramatic stage was reserved for tales of the rich and royal, whereas nowadays anything goes on stage and screen, and all walks of life are represented. O’Neill’s characters and situations would have seemed crude and harsh to the theater-going public of a century ago, and even today the grittiness of his realism and the bleakness of his outlook can be jarring. His dialogue is authentically faithful to the street slang and international accents of the waterfront dives and coal barge cabins in which the story is set. O’Neill, who worked for years as a sailor and drank heavily, would have been familiar with this world. His plays have the feeling of sketches from life, like the realist paintings of the Ashcan School.
There’s an undercurrent of feminism in the play, as Anna is an independent woman who can provide for herself and even scorns men as the cause of all the problems in her life. This feminist stance is not sustained throughout, but it’s still pretty forward for American literature of the 1920s, and the role of Anna is one of the great meaty stage roles for female performers. This play was no doubt groundbreaking for its day, but a century later the plot comes across as a bit predictable, perhaps because so many unrelated films have since been built upon a similar template.
In reading this book it’s not hard to imagine yourself in the audience, or being right there in the bar with Anna and Chris. Not every playwright’s work translates well into printed form, but O’Neill is one dramatist whose writing really leaps off the page for a great reading experience.
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