O'Neill's BEYOND THE HORIZON Performs Final Two Weeks in Chicago, Ends 4/22

Eugene O'Neill's first full-length play, BEYOND THE HORIZON, directed by Louis Contey, will perform for eight final shows and close on April 22nd. $10 industry tickets are being offered for Thursday and Friday performances.

Set on a farm in Massachusetts, this is the story of two brothers: Robert, a dreamer who longs to go the sea beyond the horizon, and Andrew, a pragmatist, who keeps his desires close to home running the family farm. Both of them share their love for the same woman, their neighbor Ruth. Their tale unfolds when Ruth's rejection of one brother and her marriage to another set the stage for discontent and disillusionment amongst the entire family shattering dreams and creating unforeseen consequences. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and originally produced on Broadway in 1920, O'Neill captures the powerful, perilous emotional currents swirling below the surface of everyday life. Jeff Award winning director Louis Contey returns to Eclipse to direct one of Eugene O'Neill's hidden gems.

Cast members include: Eclipse ensemble member Nathaniel Swift with guest artists Zach Bloomfield, Kate Harris, Bob Kruse, Molly Lyons, BrIan Parry, Emily Shain, and John Wehrman.

Eugene O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel prize winner in literature. He is the author of over 50 plays. His plays were among the first to introduce into American drama, techniques of realism earlier associated Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include speeches in the American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair. His vast canon includes such plays as Beyond the Horizon, A Touch of the Poet, Desire under the Elms, More Stately Mansions, The Iceman Cometh , The Hairy Ape, Mourning becomes Electra, Ah, Wilderness!, A Long Day's Journey into Night, Anna Christie, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Several of these works were not published or produced during O'Neill's lifetime. As New York drama critic George Jean Nathan noted, "O'Neill alone and single-handed waded through the dismal swamplands of American drama, bleak, squashy, and oozing sticky goo, and alone and single-handed bore out of them the water lily that no American had found there before him." Today, he is recognized not only as the first great American dramatist, but as one of the great dramatists of all time.

The final eight performances continue through April 22nd:  Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at 7:30pm; Sundays at 2:00pm, at The Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave. Chicago.  Post-show discussions will follow every Sunday matinee except closing weekend.

For tickets, call the Athenaeum Box Office, 773-935-6860 (open 12 to 8pm Wed-Fri; 12 to 3pm Sun) or purchase online at www.eclipsetheatre.com

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