A controversial work of extraordinary power, remarkable length (9 acts), and use of asides to express the characters’ unspoken thoughts. An outstanding, somewhat Freudian play from one of the twentieth century’s most significant writers.
Nina Leeds is a mercurial woman, haunted and broken by the death of her fiancé Gordon Shaw in the First World War – after her father had convinced him to postpone the marriage until his safe return. Always searching for the ever-elusive happiness Shaw gave her, she flirts with the feelings of the various men in her life: her friend Charles Marsden, deeply in love with her, is nevertheless too shy to confess; her new husband Sam Evans, with his own history of mental illness and inability to give her a child; Edmund ‘Ned’ Darrell, so desperate for her to leave Sam that he gives her the child she craves so badly. And then finally comes little Gordon, the result of Nina’s affair with Ned, ignorant of his parentage – the only man she really dotes on whilst the others orbit around her…
Eugene O’Neill’s play Strange Interlude opened on Broadway in January 1928, and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
This edition includes a full introduction, biographical sketch and chronology.
‘will strike viewers with its modernity… often startingly funny as well as touching… wonderfully gripping’
— Telegraph
‘shines with quiet magnificence’
— Evening Standard
‘epic, heartbreaking… has a deliciously waspish sense of humour’
— Time Out
‘remains an important text… full of theatrical excitement’
— Independent
‘[a] great play… holds its own with the very best of O’Neill’s writing’
— Exeunt Magazine
Pulitzer Prize for Drama
