Interestingly enough it starts out rather good. It is grungy and has the gritty feel young playwrights want to convey. Like Lanford Wilson who wrote the early plays like Balm in Gilead and The Hot L Baltimore, Eugene O'Neill seems fascinated with all the grittiness of of life that he was experiencing in his travels.
The stage directions set the mood directly:
"A squalid bedroom on the top floor of a rooming house..."Rose Thomas, a prostitute, has a row with her pimp/man about her health and their living conditions. There is a certain reality to the situation and that reality, fortunately, is able to penetrate the Dick Tracy- like noir patter:
"D'yuh think I'm a simp to be gittin' you protection and keepin' the bulls from runnin' yuh in when all yuh do is to stick at home and play dead."After a few pages of that you will be chuckling, and, in fact, you will find yourself wanting to to be addin' "see" to the end of every sentence,...see.
But the truth which O'Neill is able to touch upon is the truth of money. When Rose and Steve fight over money in the squalid apartment the seen actually comes to life in a way that is totally defeated in the rest of the play. In Long Day's Journey into Night we see the deep effects of money worries on the DNA of the Tyrone family.
Here a ridiculously contrived little plot happens when a stranger comes into the picture, giving Rose money and then, inconveniently, being shot. Rose is framed for the murder and as the cops are puttin' the nippers on 'er, she makes a totally strange outburst:
ROSE-(to the air) That's right. Make a good job of me. (Suddenly she stretches both arms above her head and cries bitterly, mournfully, out of the depths of her desolation) Gawd! Gawd! Why d'yuh hate me so?
This of course comes after we are told that she seems to be talking to and staring at an unseen presence in the room. It is a wholly undeserved outburst and unsupported by the brief proceedings. However, you can see O'Neill starting to formulate thoughts about tragic movements in everyday life.
However, in this attempt, I find myself siding with the cops who say, "Here, here, no rough talk like that!"
