Anthony Biggs, artistic director of Jermyn Street Theatre, stages the UK premiere of Eugene O’Neill’s The First Man. The play’s failure in 1922 is, perhaps, not surprising. The leading character, an anthropologist (Adam Jackson-Smith) is totally unsympathetic and indulges in rather too much morbid ranting, seemingly unaware how objectionable his views are.
He puts his own self-fulfilment first and expects his wife (Charlotte Asprey) to sacrifice motherhood for his career, which involves going to Asia for five years on a scientific expedition. His family, meanwhile, is convinced that his wife has been unfaithful with his best friend and that the child is not his.
O’Neill clearly identified with the anthropologist. Much of the hysterical tirade about parenthood and children is lifted directly from his letters to his wife. I suspect the real reason he did not like play was because there was too much of himself in it. O’Neill, too, put his career before wife and children and never allowed anything to interfere with his work.