Great Dramatist  Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Award winning  play “Behind the Horizon” is now at National Theatre, Cottesloe  and will be on until 20th June. NT expects the play to be shown longer than its seasonal  time.

The play takes place  on a farm in Connecticut, northeast  USA, in the early 20th century and is about  two brothers who love  the same woman  and  how they sacrifice their dreams  for this  love during the eight years .

At  the beginning of the play we see  Robert, 23, (Michael  Malarkey) reading a poetry book  on the fence while the sun sets behind him. He stops reading  for a while and watches the  horizon, gazing  at hills, fields and moves his lips as if he is talking to himself. He does not even realise presence of his brother Andrew(Michael Thomson) ,27, who says: “Gosh, you do take the prize for day dreaming”, and tries to get his poetry book and laughs and jokes. Andrew  is  intelligent but not intellectual, strong, large featured, manly  who  works  in their family farm with his father whereas Robert is  a college educated, intellectual, slender, sensitive, deep but not very  strong like his brother.

Ruth (Liz White)  and Andrew  are about to marry while Robert  tries to forget his feelings  for Ruth  and  go to sea to discover  beyond the horizon. He tells Ruth about his feelings and finds out that Ruth loves him, too. Andrew decides to leave  the  farm  and  see other places  even though he does not really want to while Robert and Ruth marry.

Soon after their marriage Ruth realises that she  actually loved Andrew  and tells  Robert  how he  makes her  feel  stupid and spends lots of time reading books rather that  working in the farm and managing it well. Those words are beginning of  Robert’s end. However Andrew does not want Ruth back,either.

Eugene O’Neill  questions  what the happiness is and shows  how big the impact  of love in our lives in a very dramatic way in Beyond the Horizon. The playwright ,whose life is a drama itself ,wrote the play in 1918 and it was produced in 1920 and brought O’Neill first of four Pulitzer Prizes in the same year.