The Emperor Jones

A very good play. Understanding the history at the time it was written helps for an understanding of the importance of the character.

Eugene O'Neill's classic play was originally produced on Broadway in 1920 with Charles S. Gilpin in the lead. It reappeared for 3 more Broadway productions. Although O'Neill himself did not embrace the label, "The Emperor Jones" seems a quintessential expressionist piece as the little formless fears, Jeff the gambler, the convicts and the auctioneer all seem to be projected from Jones' deteriorating inner emotions. The opening scene between Jones and Smithers, the Cockney trader, is powerful with the brutal dialogue & interplay between characters. The next 6 scenes all reflect Jones' inner state with the tremendous mechanism of the increasingly intense tom-tom drums driving him to the breaking point and his increasingly tattered clothing reflecting how he is being worn down. Demonstrating the expressionist technique, frequently at the conclusion of these scenes the forest seems to draw around Jones after he shoots his revolver at his illusion. Scenic designer Cleon Throckmorton broke new ground by using a plaster skydome in place of the traditional canvas cyclorama to enhance the outdoor visual effects, which would be a challenge to produce. The play climaxes offstage in Scene 8 as Jones is cornered and executed. The play shows us an island on the edge of civilization where local dictators can use muscle to loot the public treasury for personal gain as they create and evade their own laws. The sad universality of the piece is that 85 years after its first production, whether you call them Taliban, Castro or Saddam Hussein, we can still see places in the world where similar dramas of dictatorship are played with various ethnicities and geography. The savagery of O'Neill's Emperor Jones may seem different; but from Croatia to Korea, it still exists in many places. This is a play that still resonates thematically and dramatically. Enjoy!

"Emperor Jones" is a significant entry in American theater history for a number of reasons. With its dreamlike sequences featuring scenes built entirely around monologues, the play is O'Neill's first foray into experimental theater, it was the first Broadway play featuring an African-American in the lead role, and it became a 1933 film featuring Paul Robeson. And when the New York Drama League initially refused to invite Gilpin to its annual awards dinner, O'Neill led a successful protest. The story is simple: a Pullman porter, after a conviction for murder, escapes to a Caribbean island and becomes the ruler of the natives. Once the natives grow restless, the Emperor Jones takes flight through a haunted forest, only to be confronted by the ghosts of his own past (his murder victim, prison guard) and of African American history (slavery). Through each of the six middle scenes, which would be a challenge for any actor, we see Jones deteriorating mentally and physically. It all seems entirely implausible, but this short drama is not an exercise in naturalism; instead it is a dark fable prefiguring a later tradition of magic realism. In spite of its place in African American cultural history, however, both the stage directions and the dialogue (as A. R. Gurney points out in another edition of this book) "seems nowadays to be badly stereotyped." This is somewhat of an understatement. In addition to the "Heart of Darkness"-inspired drumming of the natives and the monologues of the fleeing, scared-witless "emperor," O'Neill includes stage directions that make the reader wince, as when he describes the chief of the native soldiers is "a heavy-set, ape-faced old savage of the extreme African type, dressed only in a loin cloth." These uncomfortable representations are set off only slightly by the play's only white character, who is a two-faced and greedy manipulator of the situation. Once you get past these considerable faults, typical of the societal attitudes of yesteryear, the play's power and originality are impressive.

"The Emperor Jones," by Eugene O'Neill, is a striking work by one of America's most significant dramatists. A bibliographic note in the Dover edition states that the play was first performed in 1920 and published in 1921. It's a one-act play in 8 scenes.The play tells the story of Rufus Jones, a former Pullman porter who has become the monarch of a West Indian island. But as the play opens there is trouble in his empire.This is a surreal, nightmarish character study, full of violent and disturbing images. There is some biting dialogue, as well as an intriguing exploration of tension between Black Christianity and Black "heathen" religion.Jones is a memorable figure, powerful and tragic. O'Neill's stage directions are full of fascinating visual and audio touches--his mastery of the genre is quite evident. Ultimately, "Jones" is a haunting meditation on power, belief in the supernatural, and the seemingly inescapable pull of history.

While psychological drama does not often achieve its goal, O'Neill gets it right with "The Emperor Jones." Even when reading the play, one develops a sense of inexorable dread as the native drum speeds up and the Emperor runs into one hallucination after another. All in all, a decent play, though I cannot give it five stars, since I really do not buy into the whole "Emperor" idea. It is the one thing O'Neill does not pull off.