2 early plays by Eugene O'Neill
"Recklessness"
a dark tale of sweet revenge
"Now I Ask You"
a light comedy of social folly
RECKLESSNESS (1913) plots the ingenious and cold-blooded revenge of a cuckolded husband when he discovers his younger wife's affair with his chauffeur. An American "Miss Julie" with a Hitchcockian twist, the play foreshadows O'Neill's doomed lovers and tormented spouses yearning for freedom, even to the point of death.
NOW I ASK YOU (1916) satirizes young Bohemian aspiration and suburban bourgeois complacency with witty one-liners and increasingly convoluted misunderstandings. Forward thinking Lucy Ashleigh, who claims her "ego demands freedom," weds Tom Drayton on condition that they commit to free love: they are bound only by their whim and affection, and at liberty to do as they please with whomever they please. Tom's calculated indulgence leads them both to deep, if insincere flirtations with two colorful, pretentious artists, but mutual jealousy and pride overwhelm the tangled relationships, racing to an hysterical, near-tragic conclusion. "Now I Ask You" is another look at the complications of marriage and family, but beguilingly comical, mocking the very yearnings O'Neill champions in other work, and adding undertones of Ibsen.
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