Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Robert Falls directs this early Eugene O'Neill's play (1924, whereas The Iceman Cometh was written in 1939 and Long Day's Journey into Nigh t in 1941). A huge space, St. James Theatre is more usually used for musicals than for plays, but it is the right setting for an epic set. The fire curtain rises to reveal a stage dominated by rocks on rocks, and rocks are suspended mid-air too, by ropes. Also suspended in mid-air is the house over which the characters fight to own, and so hangs accordingly over their heads like a monstrous sword.  The patriarch of the family Ephraim Cabot (played massively by Brian Dennehy) is a hard man who compels his three sons to work for him in the hope of inheriting the farm he raised from the rocks. Brutal in appearance and action, but too soft to stand against their father, the two oldest flee early in the play for California, hoping to strike easy gold. The third son Eben (Pablo Schreiber), of a different mother, remains behind, only to fall ...

démons / demons I am not surprised the demon’s name is Knife. I am surprised he takes the form of a paperknife. Some mornings liquefy into mud upon the touch. The sun on other days stages a thousand knives. Maddened with grief, a man applies a stick of butter to the dry place in which he will slide down his knife. Another man, soft son to a hard father, jams his daddy’s wife—his daddy’s cunt—with his meat knife. The black ram will never wash white, no matter how many hours the silk handkerchief rubs the knife. Demons are so theatrical and so is love. We overhear our whispering when we hold a knife. Wonderful prop! To separate lovers, it joins hand to handle, blade to body. Jee gives you, the knife!