What Jeffrey Sweet (contemporary playwrite and Chicagoan) thinks about O'Neill

O'Neill's reputation really rests on his final handful of plays -- LONG DAY'S JOURNEY, MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN and ICEMAN COMETH. AH! WILDERNESS! is also held in affection. People are pretty split on the other plays, which tend to be ambitious and over-written and clunky. The Chicago festival of O'Neill is partially an attempt to rehabilitate the reputation of the earlier plays. Some years ago, Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson and Anne Meara did pretty well with ANNA CHRISTIE but I haven't seen a lot of productions of that one since then. Mostly people think of him as the first important serious American playwright -- a trailblazer, someone who cleared the brush. But a lot of people think that others planted better crops on the area he cleared.