"Strange Interlude" is an experimental play by Eugene O'Neill that utilizes soliloquoy to express characters' inner thoughts. It explores themes of love, loss, and insanity within the life of Nina Leeds and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Strange Interlude is an experimental nine-act play by Eugene O'Neill that uses soliloquy to reveal characters' inner thoughts. The play, which won the Pulitzer Prize, explores themes of love, loss, and inherited insanity through the life of Nina Leeds.
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| Back | Strange Interlude is an experimental play in nine acts by American playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill began work on it as early as 1923 and developed its scenario in 1925; he wrote the play between May 1926 and the summer of 1927, and completed its text for publication in January 1928, during the final rehearsals for its premiere performance. Strange Interlude opened on Broadway on January 30, 1928, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Lynn Fontanne originated the central role of Nina Leeds on Broadway. It was also produced in London at the Lyric Theatre in 1931. It was included in Burns Mantle's The Best Plays of 1927-1928. Because of its length, around five hours if uncut, the play has sometimes been produced with a dinner break or on consecutive evenings. The play's subject matter, very controversial for the 1920s, led to it being censored or banned in many cities outside New York. Quick facts: Written by, Characters … Strange Interlude makes extensive use of a soliloquy technique, in which the characters speak their inner thoughts to the audience. Plot summary The plot centers on Nina Leeds, the daughter of a classics professor at a college in New England, who is devastated when her adored fiancé is killed in World War I, before they have a chance to consummate their passion. Ignoring the unconditional love of the novelist Charles Marsden, Nina embarks on a series of sordid affairs before determining to marry an amiable fool, Sam Evans. While Nina is pregnant with Sam's child, she learns a horrifying secret known only to Sam's mother: insanity runs in the Evans family and could be inherited by any child of Sam's. Realizing that a child is essential to her own and to Sam's happiness, Nina decides on a "scientific" solution. She will abort Sam's child and conceive a child with the physician Ned Darrell, letting Sam believe that it is his. The plan backfires when Nina and Ned's intimacy leads to their falling passionately in love. Twenty years later, Sam and Nina's son Gordon Evans is approaching manhood, with only Nina and Ned aware of the boy's true parentage. In the final act, Sam dies of a stroke before he can learn the truth. This leaves Nina free to marry Ned Darrell, but she declines to do so, choosing instead to marry the long-suffering Charlie Marsden, who proclaims that he now has "all the luck at last." The meaning of the title is suggested by the aging Nina in a speech near the end of the play: "Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!" |
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