The Emperor Jones by Eugene O'Neill: A Review
The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill
The first question that came to me while reading O’Nelil’s play “the Emperor Jones“ was: “would anybody seriously still bring that play to the stage today?“ The answer is, as I found out with a quick look into the Internet: “Yes!“
I found a review of a production of the “Irish Repertory Theatre” that was not dated but seemed to be pretty recent. The review doesn’t give a lot of detail about the production, but only that the lead actor is brilliant and the whole design team did a great job.
At first sight that seemed crazy for me, because the character of the emperor seems to be a complete insult against people of colour.
His language is a stereotype, he is described in the stage directions as typically negroid, “yet there is something decidedly distinctive about his face – “ and he clearly tries to imitate what he believes to be the style of white people with power.
He even calls the people that he tricked into making him emperor “niggers” several times. He created an empire only to bleed the people out.
He is so infected by the greed of western civilisation that he doesn’t care what he is doing to the people that could be his people.
Maybe that is what made the play so powerful in the 1920s, the critic on western civilisation and how it infects other people and the whole world, instead of making things better. Brutus Jones is punished for pretending to be what he is not. But what is that? An emperor? Or white?
When O’Neill wrote the play the fact that he wrote it for an actor of colour, that he wrote about the “middle passage”, the auctioning of of slaves was revolutionary. But what can it give a contemporary audience?
Let’s take a look at what happens:
Brutus Jones, a former railroad worker killed a man, went to prison killed a guard and escaped to an island where he manipulates the native people and he becomes emperor only because of money. When his subjects can’t take it anymore and they start a revolte, he has
The first question that came to me while reading O’Nelil’s play “the Emperor Jones“ was: “would anybody seriously still bring that play to the stage today?“ The answer is, as I found out with a quick look into the Internet: “Yes!“
I found a review of a production of the “Irish Repertory Theatre” that was not dated but seemed to be pretty recent. The review doesn’t give a lot of detail about the production, but only that the lead actor is brilliant and the whole design team did a great job.
At first sight that seemed crazy for me, because the character of the emperor seems to be a complete insult against people of colour.
His language is a stereotype, he is described in the stage directions as typically negroid, “yet there is something decidedly distinctive about his face – “ and he clearly tries to imitate what he believes to be the style of white people with power.
He even calls the people that he tricked into making him emperor “niggers” several times. He created an empire only to bleed the people out.
He is so infected by the greed of western civilisation that he doesn’t care what he is doing to the people that could be his people.
Maybe that is what made the play so powerful in the 1920s, the critic on western civilisation and how it infects other people and the whole world, instead of making things better. Brutus Jones is punished for pretending to be what he is not. But what is that? An emperor? Or white?
When O’Neill wrote the play the fact that he wrote it for an actor of colour, that he wrote about the “middle passage”, the auctioning of of slaves was revolutionary. But what can it give a contemporary audience?
Let’s take a look at what happens:
Brutus Jones, a former railroad worker killed a man, went to prison killed a guard and escaped to an island where he manipulates the native people and he becomes emperor only because of money. When his subjects can’t take it anymore and they start a revolte, he has