The Family Reunion
Encyclopedia
The Family Reunion is a play by T. S. Eliot
. Written mostly in blank verse
, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays
to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as unsatisfactory by its author, but has been successfully revived since the 1940s. Some critics have thought aspects of the tormented hero reflect Eliot's own difficulties with his estrangement from his first wife.
, London, with Michael Redgrave
as Harry, Helen Haye
as Lady Monchensey and Catherine Lacey
as Agatha. It ran until 22 April 1939.
In New York, the play has been staged at the Cherry Lane Theatre
in 1947, the Phoenix Theater in 1958, with Fritz Weaver
, Florence Reed and Lillian Gish
, and by the visiting Royal Shakespeare Company
in 2000 (the Swan Theatre production listed above).
Lady Monchensey are assembling for her birthday party. She is, as her doctor later explains, clinging on to life by sheer willpower:
Lady Monchensey's two brothers and three sisters are present, and a younger relation, Mary, but none of Lady Monchensey's three sons. Among other things they discuss the sudden, and not to them wholly unwelcome, death at sea of the wife of the eldest son Harry, the present Lord Monchensey. Neither of the younger sons ever appears, both being slightly injured in motoring accidents, but Harry soon arrives, his first appearance at Wishwood for eight years. He is haunted by the belief that he pushed his wife off the ship. In fact Harry has an alibi for the time, but whether he killed her or not he wished her dead and his feelings of guilt are the driving force in the rest of the play. Lady Monchensey decides that Harry's state warrants the discreet observation of the family doctor, who is invited to join the party, ostensibly as a dinner guest. Mary, who has been earmarked by Amy as a future wife for Harry, wishes to escape from life at Wishwood, but her aunt Agatha tells her that she must wait:
Agatha reveals to Harry that his father attempted to kill Amy while Harry was in her womb, and that Agatha prevented him. Far from being grateful, Amy resented and still resents Agatha's depriving her of her husband. Harry, with Agatha's encouragement, announces his intention to go away from Wishwood, leaving his steady younger brother John to take over. Amy, despairing at Harry's renunciation of Wishwood, dies (offstage), "An old woman alone in a damned house", and Harry and his faithful servant, Downing, leave.
, and continued to use the form in his post-war stage works. Though the work has superficial resemblances to a conventional 1930s drawing room drama, Eliot uses two devices from ancient Greek drama:
Despite these Greek themes, Stephen Spender
commented that the whole play was "about the hero's discovery of his religious vocation as a result of his sense of guilt."
The review added that apart from the chorus of baffled uncles and aunts, "one looks elsewhere in vain for any articulate philosophy." The Times
commented on the lack of drama in the play, but concluded, "But the play as a whole, though it lacks something of stage force, is still one which Mr Eliot may be proud to have written."
The director of the play, E. Martin Browne
summed up the critical response:
In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University
, Eliot criticised his own plays, specifically Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party
. Eliot regarded The Family Reunion as seriously flawed for reasons that may be summarised as follows:
By the time of the 1956 revival, Kenneth Tynan
was referring to "this has-been, would-be masterpiece": "though Mr Eliot can always lower the dramatic temperature, he can never raise it: and this is why the theatre, an impure assembly that loves strong emotions, must ultimately reject him."
Acknowledging the flaws in the work, the Eliot scholar Helen Gardner wrote, "Both plot and persons fail to reveal to us, as drama must, a spectacle for our contemplation. Because there is no real action there are no real persons." However, Gardner added, "The progress from Burnt Norton
to Little Gidding
would hardly have been possible without The Family Reunion.
" and Eliot himself had vetoed the casting of John Gielgud
because he thought him "not religious enough to understand the character's motivation." Some modern critics see in Harry a parallel with Eliot's own emotional difficulties of the time, with his estrangement from his first wife. The director of the first production, and Michael Redgrave who first played Harry, both asked Eliot, "What happens to Harry after he leaves?" Eliot responded with an additional fifty lines to Harry's scene with Amy and Agatha (Part II, scene 2) in which his destination is said to be "somewhere on the other side of despair".
's well-received translations of Greek drama, presented by Harley Granville Barker. Eliot himself had already employed such a chorus in Murder in the Cathedral but his chorus of uncles and aunts in The Family Reunion differs radically from the Greek model and his own earlier version in that their comments are not for the enlightenment of the audience but are expressions of their own perplexity:
Their absurdity acts as comic relief. Although Eliot came to think that the chorus was a failure, reviewers in the present century have commented more favourably: "The transformation of Harry's buffoonish aunts and uncles into a Greek chorus is at once absurd and compelling." "The chorus… are doubly effective when retreating into the spotlight from their own amusingly stereotyped personalities.".
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. Written mostly in blank verse
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
, it incorporates elements from Greek drama and mid-twentieth-century detective plays
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
to portray the hero's journey from guilt to redemption. The play was unsuccessful when first presented in 1939, and was later regarded as unsatisfactory by its author, but has been successfully revived since the 1940s. Some critics have thought aspects of the tormented hero reflect Eliot's own difficulties with his estrangement from his first wife.
Première
The play was first performed on 21 March 1939 at the Westminster TheatreWestminster Theatre
The Westminster Theatre was a London theatre, on Palace Street in Westminster. It was originally built as the Charlotte Chapel in 1766, which was altered and given a new frontage for use as a cinema from 1924 onwards. It finally became a theatre in 1931 after radical alterations...
, London, with Michael Redgrave
Michael Redgrave
Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave, CBE was an English stage and film actor, director, manager and author.-Youth and education:...
as Harry, Helen Haye
Helen Haye
Helen Haye was a British stage and film actress.She began acting on the stage in 1898 and debuted in London in 1911 as Gertrude in Hamlet. Her film career began in 1917. She often worked with director Alexander Korda...
as Lady Monchensey and Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey
Catherine Lacey was an English actress who made her film debut in 1938 as the secretive nun who wears high heels in the Alfred Hitchcock film The Lady Vanishes . She was an established stage character player before she was 30...
as Agatha. It ran until 22 April 1939.
Revivals
Other productions of the play have included:- Mercury Theatre, London (November 1946) with Alan WheatleyAlan WheatleyAlan Wheatley was a radio announcer who turned to stage and screen acting in the 1930s and was much seen in British films, being a television actor during the black and white era....
, Catherine Lacey and Henrietta Watson - Phoenix TheatrePhoenix Theatre (London)The Phoenix Theatre is a West End theatre in the London Borough of Camden, located on Charing Cross Road . The entrance is in Phoenix Street....
, London (June 1956) with Paul ScofieldPaul ScofieldDavid Paul Scofield, CH, CBE , better known as Paul Scofield, was an English actor of stage and screen...
, Sybil ThorndikeSybil ThorndikeDame Agnes Sybil Thorndike CH DBE was a British actress.-Early life:She was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire to Arthur Thorndike and Agnes Macdonald. Her father was a Canon of Rochester Cathedral...
and Gwen Ffrangcon-DaviesGwen Ffrangcon-DaviesDame Gwen Lucy Ffrangcon-Davies, DBE was a British actress and centenarian. She was born in London of a Welsh family; the name "Ffrangcon" originates from a valley in Snowdonia... - Vaudeville TheatreVaudeville TheatreThe Vaudeville Theatre is a West End theatre on The Strand in the City of Westminster. As the name suggests, the theatre held mostly vaudeville shows and musical revues in its early days. It opened in 1870 and was rebuilt twice, although each new building retained elements of the previous...
, London (April 1979) with Edward FoxEdward Fox (actor)Edward Charles Morice Fox, OBE is an English stage, film and television actor.He is generally associated with portraying the role of the upper-class Englishman, such as the title character in the film The Day of the Jackal and King Edward VIII in the serial Edward & Mrs...
, Pauline Jameson and Avril ElgarAvril ElgarAvril Elgar is an English stage, radio and television actress.She trained at the London Old Vic Theatre School... - Swan TheatreSwan TheatreSwan Theatre may refer to:* The Swan , an Elizabethan playhouse* Swan Theatre , a theatre belonging to the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England...
, Stratford upon Avon (June 1999; transferred to the Pit Theatre, Barbican Centre, London, February 2000) with Greg HicksGreg HicksGreg Hicks is an English actor. He completed theatrical training at Rose Bruford College and has been a member of The Royal Shakespeare Company since 1976...
, Margaret TyzackMargaret TyzackMargaret Maud Tyzack, CBE was a British actress.-Early life:Tyzack was born in Essex, England, the daughter of Doris and Thomas Edward Tyzack. She grew up in West Ham...
and Lynn FarleighLynn Farleigh-Television and film:Lynn Farleigh is perhaps best known for playing: Helen Wycliffe in Wycliffe; Krupskaya opposite Patrick Stewart's Lenin in the historical BBC drama Fall of Eagles; and the glamorous Vivien Ashton in the second series of the LWT secret agent series Wish Me Luck broadcast in... - Donmar WarehouseDonmar WarehouseDonmar Warehouse is a small not-for-profit theatre in the Covent Garden area of London, with a capacity of 251.-About:Under the artistic leadership of Michael Grandage, the theatre has presented some of London’s most memorable award-winning theatrical experiences, as well as garnered critical...
, London (November 2008) with Samuel WestSamuel WestSamuel Alexander Joseph West is an English actor and theatre director. He is perhaps best known for his role in Howards End and his work on stage. He also starred in the award-winning play ENRON...
, Gemma JonesGemma JonesGemma Jones is an English character actress on both stage and screen.-Early life:Jones was born in London, England, the daughter of Irene and Griffith Jones, an actor. Her brother, Nicholas Jones, is also an actor...
and Penelope WiltonPenelope WiltonPenelope Alice Wilton, OBE is an English actress.-Life and career:Penelope Alice Wilton was born in Scarborough, North Riding of Yorkshire, to a former actress mother and a businessman father. She is a niece of actors Bill Travers and Linden Travers and a cousin of the actor Richard Morant...
directed by Jeremy HerrinJeremy HerrinJeremy Herrin is an English theatre director and currently the Deputy Artistic Director of the Royal Court Theatre in London. He trained as a theatre director at both the Royal Court and the National Theatre...
In New York, the play has been staged at the Cherry Lane Theatre
Cherry Lane Theatre
The Cherry Lane Theatre , located at 38 Commerce Street in the borough of Manhattan, was New York City's oldest, continuously running off-Broadway theater...
in 1947, the Phoenix Theater in 1958, with Fritz Weaver
Fritz Weaver
Fritz William Weaver is an American actor and voice actor.-Life and career:Weaver was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Elsa W. and John Carson Weaver. His mother was of Italian descent and his father was a social worker from Pittsburgh. Weaver attended Peabody High School...
, Florence Reed and Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish
Lillian Diana Gish was an American stage, screen and television actress whose film acting career spanned 75 years, from 1912 to 1987....
, and by the visiting Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in 2000 (the Swan Theatre production listed above).
Plot
The play is in two acts, set in Wishwood, a stately home in the north of England. At the beginning, the family of Amy, DowagerDowager
A dowager is a widow who holds a title or property, or dower, derived from her deceased husband. As an adjective, "Dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles....
Lady Monchensey are assembling for her birthday party. She is, as her doctor later explains, clinging on to life by sheer willpower:
- ...........I keep Wishwood alive
- To keep the family alive, to keep them together,
- To keep me alive, and I keep them.
Lady Monchensey's two brothers and three sisters are present, and a younger relation, Mary, but none of Lady Monchensey's three sons. Among other things they discuss the sudden, and not to them wholly unwelcome, death at sea of the wife of the eldest son Harry, the present Lord Monchensey. Neither of the younger sons ever appears, both being slightly injured in motoring accidents, but Harry soon arrives, his first appearance at Wishwood for eight years. He is haunted by the belief that he pushed his wife off the ship. In fact Harry has an alibi for the time, but whether he killed her or not he wished her dead and his feelings of guilt are the driving force in the rest of the play. Lady Monchensey decides that Harry's state warrants the discreet observation of the family doctor, who is invited to join the party, ostensibly as a dinner guest. Mary, who has been earmarked by Amy as a future wife for Harry, wishes to escape from life at Wishwood, but her aunt Agatha tells her that she must wait:
- ...........You and I, Mary
- Are only watchers and waiters, not the easiest role,
Agatha reveals to Harry that his father attempted to kill Amy while Harry was in her womb, and that Agatha prevented him. Far from being grateful, Amy resented and still resents Agatha's depriving her of her husband. Harry, with Agatha's encouragement, announces his intention to go away from Wishwood, leaving his steady younger brother John to take over. Amy, despairing at Harry's renunciation of Wishwood, dies (offstage), "An old woman alone in a damned house", and Harry and his faithful servant, Downing, leave.
Structure
The play is partly in blank verse and partly in prose. Eliot had already experimented with verse drama in Murder in the CathedralMurder in the Cathedral
Murder in the Cathedral is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot that portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, first performed in 1935...
, and continued to use the form in his post-war stage works. Though the work has superficial resemblances to a conventional 1930s drawing room drama, Eliot uses two devices from ancient Greek drama:
- Harry's uncles and aunts occasionally detach themselves from the action and chant a commentary on the plot, in the manner of a Greek chorus
- Harry is pursued by the EumenidesEumenidesEumenides may refer to:* Another name for the Erinyes, Greek deities of vengeance* The Eumenides, the third part of Aeschylus' Greek tragedy, the Oresteia...
– the avenging Furies who pursue OrestesOrestesOrestes was the son of Agamemnon in Greek mythology; Orestes may also refer to:Drama*Orestes , by Euripides*Orestes, the character in Sophocles' tragedy Electra*Orestes, the character in Aeschylus' trilogy of tragedies, Oresteia...
in the Oresteia; they are seen not only by Harry but by his servant and the most perceptive member of his family, Agatha
Despite these Greek themes, Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
commented that the whole play was "about the hero's discovery of his religious vocation as a result of his sense of guilt."
Critical reception
Critical reception after the première was cautious. The Manchester Guardian opened its review:- The heart, even of the formidable swarm of intelligence that gathered tonight at the Westminster to see Mr. T. S. Eliot's "The Family Reunion," went out audibly to the family's stupid Uncle Charles when, near curtain-fall, he had the remark: "It's very odd, but I'm beginning to feel that there is something I could understand if I were told it."
The review added that apart from the chorus of baffled uncles and aunts, "one looks elsewhere in vain for any articulate philosophy." The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
commented on the lack of drama in the play, but concluded, "But the play as a whole, though it lacks something of stage force, is still one which Mr Eliot may be proud to have written."
The director of the play, E. Martin Browne
E. Martin Browne
E. Martin Browne was a British theatre director, known for his production of twentieth century verse plays. He collaborated for many years with T. S...
summed up the critical response:
- The play was received with incomprehension, exemplified in James AgateJames AgateJames Evershed Agate was a British diarist and critic. In the period between the wars, he was one of Britain's most influential theatre critics...
's silly-clever review in a parody of its verse. March 1939 was not the best moment for a work which pulls off blinkers: England was still trying too hard to keep them on.
In 1951, in the first Theodore Spencer Memorial Lecture at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, Eliot criticised his own plays, specifically Murder in the Cathedral, The Family Reunion, and The Cocktail Party
The Cocktail Party
The Cocktail Party is a play by T. S. Eliot. Elements of the play are based on Alcestis, by the Ancient Greek playwright Euripides. The play was the most popular of Eliot's seven plays in his lifetime, although his 1935 play, Murder in the Cathedral, is better remembered today.The Cocktail Party...
. Eliot regarded The Family Reunion as seriously flawed for reasons that may be summarised as follows:
- The play is badly paced, coming to an excessively abrupt conclusion after "an interminable amount of preparation."
- The Greek elements are not successfully integrated into the work:
- the attempt to portray the House of Monchensey as a British House of Atreus poisoned to its roots by sins both recent and long ago fails either to stick closely to AeschylusAeschylusAeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...
or to venture far enough away from him, and so remains marooned in an artistic no man's land - the attempt to transform the aunts and uncles into a Greek chorus is unsuccessful
- the Furies are a failure, as they look like uninvited guests from a fancy dress ball
- the attempt to portray the House of Monchensey as a British House of Atreus poisoned to its roots by sins both recent and long ago fails either to stick closely to Aeschylus
- It is hard for an audience to sympathise with a hero who renounces his mother, his house and his heritage for the spiritual life, when he is plainly, in Eliot's words, "an insufferable prig."
By the time of the 1956 revival, Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Peacock Tynan was an influential and often controversial English theatre critic and writer.-Early life:...
was referring to "this has-been, would-be masterpiece": "though Mr Eliot can always lower the dramatic temperature, he can never raise it: and this is why the theatre, an impure assembly that loves strong emotions, must ultimately reject him."
Acknowledging the flaws in the work, the Eliot scholar Helen Gardner wrote, "Both plot and persons fail to reveal to us, as drama must, a spectacle for our contemplation. Because there is no real action there are no real persons." However, Gardner added, "The progress from Burnt Norton
Four Quartets
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral...
to Little Gidding
Four Quartets
Four Quartets is a set of four poems written by T. S. Eliot that were published individually over a six-year period. The first poem, "Burnt Norton", was written and published with a collection of his early works following the production of Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral...
would hardly have been possible without The Family Reunion.
Harry
A contemporary review described Harry as "an unresolved amalgam of Orestes and HamletHamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
" and Eliot himself had vetoed the casting of John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
because he thought him "not religious enough to understand the character's motivation." Some modern critics see in Harry a parallel with Eliot's own emotional difficulties of the time, with his estrangement from his first wife. The director of the first production, and Michael Redgrave who first played Harry, both asked Eliot, "What happens to Harry after he leaves?" Eliot responded with an additional fifty lines to Harry's scene with Amy and Agatha (Part II, scene 2) in which his destination is said to be "somewhere on the other side of despair".
Chorus
In the 1930s, the verse chorus was enjoying a revival begun by Gilbert MurrayGilbert Murray
George Gilbert Aimé Murray, OM was an Australian born British classical scholar and public intellectual, with connections in many spheres. He was an outstanding scholar of the language and culture of Ancient Greece, perhaps the leading authority in the first half of the twentieth century...
's well-received translations of Greek drama, presented by Harley Granville Barker. Eliot himself had already employed such a chorus in Murder in the Cathedral but his chorus of uncles and aunts in The Family Reunion differs radically from the Greek model and his own earlier version in that their comments are not for the enlightenment of the audience but are expressions of their own perplexity:
- There is nothing at all to be done about it;
- There is nothing to do about anything.
- And now it is nearly time for the News;
- We must listen to the Weather Report
- And the international catastrophes
Their absurdity acts as comic relief. Although Eliot came to think that the chorus was a failure, reviewers in the present century have commented more favourably: "The transformation of Harry's buffoonish aunts and uncles into a Greek chorus is at once absurd and compelling." "The chorus… are doubly effective when retreating into the spotlight from their own amusingly stereotyped personalities.".
Text
Before the 1946 revival, Eliot considered revising the play, but "as soon as I start thinking about the play, I have inklings of altering it still further" and rather than completely rewrite his 1939 text Eliot felt "it would be healthier to leave it alone" and he started work on a new play, "One-Eyed Riley", which became The Cocktail Party. Despite his own criticism of The Family Reunion in his 1951 lecture, Eliot let the original text stand.Further reading
- E. Martin BrowneE. Martin BrowneE. Martin Browne was a British theatre director, known for his production of twentieth century verse plays. He collaborated for many years with T. S...
, The Making of T.S. Eliot's Plays - T. S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays
- Grover Smith, T.S. Eliot's Poetry and Plays: A Study in Sources and Meaning