O’Neill’s Nina Erupts: A Not-So-Strange Interlude with Glenda Jackson

The recent passing of legendary British actress Glenda Jackson (1936–2023) reminded me that tucked away in my O'Neill Renaissance files was my unpublished interview with her that took place during the 1988 O'Neill centenary. The purpose of that interview was to discuss her 1985 West End performance as Nina Leeds in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude. That highly acclaimed production then traveled to Broadway, where it was nominated for numerous Tony Awards. The production, with some American cast replacements, was then filmed for television.Jackson was a formally trained actress who won a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (1954). Upon graduation, she began her professional acting career in British repertory and eventually became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, performing in Peter Brook's Theatre of Cruelty unit. With that company she played Charlotte Corday in Peter Weiss's The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton, better known as Marat/Sade (1966), in London, New York, and on film. The performance brought her international acclaim and launched her film career.Jackson's life personified a series of remarkable interludes. Her roots were working class, and throughout her life she maintained the values she learned from her father, a bricklayer, and her mother, a cleaning woman and barmaid. I recall Jackson's visceral disdain when she mentioned Margaret Thatcher, who in 1988 was the Conservative prime minister of England. Jackson's abhorrence was so potent it motivated her to leave her successful film, stage, and television career to run for and be elected to the British Parliament. As an MP, she represented the Labour Party for twenty-three years (1992–2015). She retired from government service in her late seventies citing her age as a restriction, something that did not stop her from revitalizing her acting career. At the time of our 1988 interview, Jackson had won two Academy Awards and numerous Emmys. In 2015, at the age of eighty-two, she won Broadway's Tony Award, an achievement that made her one of only a few performers to become a triple-crown winner of American acting awards. At the time of our interview in 1988, Jackson was once again in Manhattan appearing as Lady Macbeth, Christopher Plummer's plotting spouse, in the Scottish play directed by Zoe Caldwell. Jackson's final Broadway performance was as Shakespeare's King Lear.Prior to 1988, there had been no major Broadway revivals of Strange Interlude since Geraldine Page appeared as Nina Leeds in 1963, a production coproduced by Circle in the Square Theatre and the Actors Studio. Strange Interlude's 1963 cast included Ben Gazzara (later replaced by Rip Torn), Franchot Tone, Pat Hingle, Betty Field, Jane Fonda, and Richard Thomas. It was directed by the premier O'Neill director of his generation, José Quintero. Having directed Page previously, Quintero knew that Nina Leeds was a part ideally suited to the actress's ability to nakedly expose a character's subconscious. Before the 1963 version, came the 1928–1929 Pulitzer Prize–winning Theater Guild Broadway premiere starring Lynn Fontanne, directed by Philip Moeller. This production became the talk of the season as it dealt with taboo subjects such as a woman's promiscuity, abortion, and adultery. Performances began at 5:15 p.m. and included a dinner break between acts 5 and 6 as the play is written in nine acts. A severely cut film version (1932) was made as a star vehicle for Norma Shearer with Clark Gable. This truncated version reduced O'Neill's script into a drawing room domestic drama.When Jackson opened her hotel room door, I was shocked when I had to look down because the diminutive actress was no more than five foot two. Her on-stage and film demeanor was so titanic, so hot, so riveting that my imagination had turned her into a giantess. My notions of Jackson as formidable and overwhelming were also quickly altered. The person I experienced was an intent listener, patient, gracious, and thrillingly articulate.The interview that follows clarifies why Strange Interlude is so rarely performed and so technically difficult to achieve. The play's major characters speak aloud their innermost thoughts, fears, and desires. Retelling the play's plot turns its subject matter into melodrama. Its title, however, illuminates the narrative's trajectory as interludes, ones typifying the human quest for happiness and meaning. As the character of Nina muses, "Our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father."1Because the playwright is Eugene O'Neill, these interludes are messianic, as each of the play's characters grapple with the nature of God, their place in the cosmos, and personal autonomy within an interdependent and structured society. Because Nina is the central character, these interludes are cisgendered and female-centered. During each interlude in her life, Nina seeks an idealized version of love as a direct reaction to the tragic death of her fiancé during World War I. Because the play occurs in the twenty-five years following World War I, Nina's search is confined to the kinds of choices an upper-middle-class woman would most likely navigate. These include managing her sexual drives through the safety of marriage, success through the achievements of one's spouse, and motherhood as a surrogate for everlasting love.Upon returning to her father's home after a period of promiscuity while nursing wounded war veterans, Nina realizes she has been controlled by guilt imposed by male-centered morality and its punishing God the Father. She tells her friend and platonic admirer Charles Marsden thatIn act 9, Nina is a widow anticipating her final interlude. She realizes that her life was never in her control but one that evolved trying to fulfill male-centered notions of womanhood. Nina makes the choice to marry the kindly, adoring, and asexual Charles Marsden. All along, he has represented for her a woman-centered God the Mother, one that is nurturing, gentle, and forgiving.While still at mid-interlude in her acting career, Jackson demanded the highest standards for her productions. In 1985 after undertaking Strange Interlude, Jackson played Jean Racine's Phaedra at the Old Vic, a play she refused to perform unless the translation met her approval. She held the same standard when taking on Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage, which she performed in 1990, first in Glasgow and then at London's Mermaid Theater. Like Phaedra and Mother Courage, Strange Interlude gives epic stature to a women's life.Jackson's final Broadway characterization was as the defiant then defeated King Lear. When asked "Why Lear?," she became philosophical, observing that "when we're born, we teach babies . . . to be boys or girls. As we get older, those absolute barriers that define gender begin to crack with age."3Jackson's gender concept for Lear marked the fulfillment of Her self-created life trajectory. Glenda Jackson (figure 1) achieved Her interludes Her way.