Miles to Babylon: A Play in Two Acts
2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5325/eugeoneirevi.34.1.0111
ISSN2161-4318
Autores ResumoLike many playwrights, Ann Harson has chosen to dramatize an important occurrence in someone's life about which little is known. She takes as a premise what Eugene O'Neill revealed about his mother in his masterpiece, Long Day's Journey Into Night: that she struggled with a seemingly incurable addiction to morphine. Harson knew, too, that Mary Ellen (Ella) Quinlan O'Neill eventually freed herself from that crippling, twenty-five-year illness through a prayerful visit to a convent. Anything between those two facts is fair game for a dramatist. The playwright only needs to convince the audience that the imagined events really could have happened. In her preface Harson writes that she created this full-length play about Ella O'Neill “to vindicate her from her son's scathing depiction in his famous play,” to write a drama with strong roles for middle-aged women, and “to explore a setting and way of life that is seldom witnessed by the outside world” (1–2). She achieves the first two goals; the third is problematic.Harson finished Miles to Babylon in time for a reading on October 16, 1988, the centennial of Eugene O'Neill's birth. The play debuted in Monte Cristo Cottage, his childhood home in New London, Connecticut. After further readings and several awards, it was produced in New York in 2006 and London in 2008. The few reviews I found were generally laudatory. In a review of the 2006 New York production, which is reprinted in this edition, Robert S. McLean calls it “an interesting and gripping drama” (133) as well as “moving and credible” (134).Since plays are written primarily to be staged—O'Neill's contrary opinion aside—a review of a published version could render a disservice to a play and its author. On the other hand, because productions are ephemeral and all too rare, a published script may be the only way to become familiar with a dramatic work. The reader's experience begins with the book itself. Miles to Babylon is an attractive paperback with large, clear type and seven production photos, but the organization diverges from the expected sequence. Information about previous productions and cast appear not in front as is usually done but in the back, followed by McLean's review. The book begins with a preface by the author and a brief introduction by O'Neill biographer Stephen A. Black. These lead logically into the play but three lists (of costumes, sound, and props) break the mood for the reader—one reason why such technical details are usually presented in the back, if at all. “Cast and Settings,” which appears next, indicates four scenes in act 1—but there are only three.The action of Miles to Babylon begins in 1953, a significant year for O'Neillians as the year that O'Neill died, but the play contains no mention of this. (One wonders if the playwright knew about it.) Catherine (Sister Mary Ellen), a nun of the order of the Sacred Cross, faces the audience and reads a letter she is writing to the current mother superior, her former classmate Amelia. Catherine left the convent forty years earlier and now asks what has happened since her departure, especially to Mrs. O'Neill, “that unfortunate woman. She has haunted my waking hours these last few years” (15). Catherine then steps back into the convent just before Christmas 1913, where she becomes a sassy, disrespectful postulant soon to take the vows that will make her a novice. She joins another postulant, the somber Amelia, and Mother Dolores, the convent's mother superior and Ella's former classmate.We learn that the convent is in desperate financial straits and counting on monetary support from the wealthy Ella, wife of nationally acclaimed actor James O'Neill. Ella had attended the school as a girl and is returning to her beloved mentor, Mother Elizabeth, for help in conquering her addiction. Mother Dolores sends Archie, the convent's mentally retarded jack-of-all-trades, to bring Ella from the train station (think Lennie in Of Mice and Men). Upon her arrival and several more times, Ella asks for Mother Elizabeth. Mother Dolores evades the question instead of telling her that Mother Elizabeth died a month earlier. When Catherine unwittingly reveals the truth, an angry Ella decides to leave on the next train, which will depart the following morning.The convent is a cloistered (enclosed) facility that restricts access and monitors its gates. This does not stop Ella when she learns that a pharmacy is nearby and always available. After the nuns retire, she slips out into the snowy night, buys her morphine, and gets back inside unnoticed. She injects herself and hides her stash in her closet. Not surprisingly, she decides to stay after all. One rewarding subplot involves the mother-daughter relationship that Ella and Catherine develop as Ella struggles with her addiction and Catherine questions her impending decision to spend her life in the cloister. A more worrisome subplot involves squirrels in the attic. Archie has captured one and intends to catch the other, which he asks to keep as a pet. Unlike Steinbeck's Lennie, who accidentally killed a mouse, a pup, and a woman through an excess of caring, Archie reveals that he killed the first squirrel deliberately, bashing it with a heavy wooden cross: “That's what hit him, good and hard, and he fell over dead.” Mother Dolores replies, “That's good, Archie” (54). Reading this, I concluded that Archie was capable of violence, even if the nuns seemingly didn't notice.When Mother Dolores learns that Ella has ongoing, unfettered access to morphine, she keeps her up praying all night. Prayer isn't working, yet for some unexplained reason it doesn't occur to Mother Dolores simply to monitor the gates. She does suggest, “Perhaps if we got rid of the bag in the closet.” Ella replies, “No! It's only my victory if I stay and ignore it” (67). Finally, desperate to get clean, Ella asks Archie to stay in her room and keep her away from her closet. Mother Dolores says, “I can't be responsible,” and then, “Do as she tells you, Archie. Go up to her room…. Stay with her for as long as it takes” (92).I had reservations before but now reached the point where it was impossible to suspend disbelief, even though other reviewers have called the play “credible” and “plausible.” It is difficult to accept that any nun in any convent—and especially a cloistered one—would order a mentally retarded man with a propensity for violence to spend the night in the bedroom of a desperate addict who is in her nightclothes and preparing for bed. It would be unthinkable today and more so in 1913. The nuns would have called it at least “an occasion of sin.”Desperate for the morphine in her closet, Ella tries to seduce Archie. The nuns burst in as she has him on the floor, kissing him. Caught, she claims, “The man has abused me” (108). Would the real Ella O'Neill have done this? Possibly. According to Long Day's Journey, one memorable night Ella ran out of morphine and tried to throw herself into the river. Therefore I can believe this action by the fictional Ella. What I cannot believe is that Mother Dolores decides all is well—over protests from Catherine—and walks out, again leaving Archie and Ella alone in her bedroom. Ella finally tricks the dimwitted Archie, gets into her closet, and tries to inject herself, only to discover that Mother Dolores has removed her stash. Why, then, did Mother Dolores put Archie in Ella's room for the night? It's another point of disbelief. Ella next raises the cross to kill Archie but reconsiders. Mortified at her behavior, she undergoes a painful withdrawal from morphine and by Christmas morning is scared straight, finally free of her addiction. All bask in the joy of their Christmas miracle.The play has a few distracting red herrings and some errors in stage directions that a theater audience might not notice. In the third scene of act 1, for example, Ella, Mother Dolores, and Catherine are in Ella's room. In the very next scene (act 2, scene 1), which takes place “later that morning,” Catherine says Ella is not yet awake to accept a bill from the pharmacist's son (76) and Mother Dolores later asks, “Has anyone seen Mrs. O'Neill today?” Catherine replies, “I went by her room … but the door was locked” (79)—yet they had just been with her. More annoying was hearing Mother Dolores repeat Ella's name in many lines of dialogue (e.g., 69). Nevertheless, I found much to like in the play including the inventiveness of the plot and the playwright's fresh way of saying things: Mother Dolores:I've followed Mr. O'Neill's career all these years, hoping to get a newspaper glimpse of my dear old friend at his side.Ella:Like the sleeve of his coat, forever dangling on his arm. (27) Later, Mother Dolores, speaking of Ella's sons Jamie and Eugene, asks: “Still they are devoted to you?” and Ella replies, “I see them when lint is all they can feel in their pockets” (29–30).Harson took on a daunting challenge and met it successfully. Plays are created through the daring, talent, and imagination of the writer and produced by a team of involved collaborators. Through her script and her well-received productions of Miles to Babylon, Harson proves that it can be done. She has transformed a scanty biographical record of a real person into a fully realized work of dramatic art. She and McFarland and Company have done O'Neillians a service by making this intriguing play available to those who would have no opportunity to see it produced.
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