The Play of the Misbegotten

O'Neill's dramas often imitate their own existence as theater, as actions people put on for themselves or others. The climactic music and dance of The Moon of the Caribbees, the emperor costume of Brutus Jones, the compelling but awkward masks of The Great God Brown, the infamous production demands of Lazarus Laughed, the Aeschylean presence that hovers around Mourning Becomes Electra, the safety of recovered roles in Harry Hope's bar, the posture and self-parody of Can Melody: O'Neill's audiences and readers experience many forms of theatrical self-consciousness in the plays. The production of meaning in O'Neill can unfold for us in those moments when his theater illuminates itself and OUf awareness of its own representational status . This element of his dramaturgy comes into particularly clear focus in A Moon for the Misbegotten. "More than any other of his late plays," Timo Tiusanen states, .. this drama ... seems to presuppose a theatre production." The last work O'Neill was able to finish, A Moon for the Misbegollen seems to gather a life's work for the theater into a final synthesis of life with theater.