Critic Clive Barnes once called Eugene O'Neill the world's worst great playwright and Brooks Atkinson called him a tragic dramatist with a great knack for old-fashioned melodrama. These descriptions of the man can also be used to describe his work. Despite the fact that O'Neill is the only American playwright to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and his last works are some of America's finest, most of his published works are not good. This work closely examines how O'Neill's failures as a playwright are inspiring and how his disappointments are reflections of his own theory that tragedy...

Jason Robards is particularly remembered for having created on Broadway central roles in the later plays of Eugene O'Neill. He also won consecutive Oscars as best supporting actor for the films All the President's Men (1977) and Julia (1978). This tribute honors Robards in two parts. Part One presents interviews of and essays about the late actor. Part Two contains more personal recollections. Also included are particularly fine obituary and memorial notices by Kevin Spacey, Joe Morgenstern, and Charles Saydah, and a tribute by Jason Robards' colleagues at The Roundabout Theatre.

Is theater really dead? Does the theater, as its champions insist, really provide a more intimate experience than film? If so, how have changes in cinematic techniques and technologies altered the relationship between stage and film? What are the inherent limitations of representing three-dimensional spaces in a two-dimensional one, and vice versa? "American Drama in the Age of Film" examines the strengths and weaknesses of both the dramatic and cinematic arts to confront the standard arguments in the film-versus-theater debate. Using widely known adaptations of ten major plays, Brietzke...