Lazarus Laughed by Eugene O’Neill

Strange multi-masked biblical tragedy

Lazarus Laughed is a full-length drama by American playwright Eugene O’Neill, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. O’Neill wrote the play in 1925. It was published in book form in 1927 and first performed on stage at the Pasadena Community Playhouse in 1928.

Set in ancient times, Lazarus Laughed is based on the biblical story of Jesus Christ raising Lazarus from the dead. Or rather, it’s O’Neill’s speculation on what might have happened after that miracle took place. Christ does not appear in the play. He has already departed Lazarus’s house before the curtain opens, though he is discussed and debated in absentia. Here in O’Neill’s take on things, the resurrected Lazarus ascends to the height of a messiah to rival Christ himself. Lazarus defies Christian and Jewish teachings by leading a cult whose members deny the existence of death and live for laughter and pleasure. 

The drama begins in Lazarus’s hometown of Bethany, in present-day Palestine. Subsequent scenes take place in Athens and Rome, where Lazarus meets Emperor Tiberius and his successor Caligula. Stylistically, this drama is heavily influenced by Greek tragedy. O’Neill tries to evoke the experience of an ancient theatrical production. A chorus (actually more than one) chants narration and commentary throughout the play, and almost all of the actors are masked. Soon after completing Lazarus Laughed, O’Neill used such stylistic elements to again emulate Greek tragedy in The Great God Brown, a play set in modern times.

Lazarus Laughed has only been staged a few times over the past century, probably because O’Neill really didn’t make it easy to produce this drama. In some scenes, his stage directions call for as many as 150 actors on stage at once. Other than Lazarus and his wife, just about everyone else is wearing masks. One scene asks for 49 different male masks and 49 different female masks, and the actors change masks in each scene. O’Neill calls for masks varying in size, emotional expression, age, and ethnicity, and specifies multiple combinations of those characteristics, thus probably at least 500 detailed and well-crafted masks are required to pull this off the way he wanted it. I would imagine the few theatres and schools who actually staged this play likely cut corners in mask manufacturing because O’Neill’s specifications would be cost prohibitive and near impossible to follow to the letter.

Other than simply telling a story about Lazarus and Tiberius, what is the point of all this? I don’t know what literary critics might say about it, but for me personally, I get a message similar to that taught by the ancient Greek and Roman Stoics, that fear of death prevents us from truly living our lives. Lazarus’s repeated assertions in this play that there is no death can be taken two ways: 1) that eternal life in Heaven means there is no death, or 2) that death simply brings a nothingness that is neither to be felt nor feared, so enjoy yourself and live your life on Earth to the fullest. Based on the behavior of Lazarus’s followers in this play, and on how O’Neill lived his life, I’m guessing he meant the latter. There has to be a better way to get that across, however, than having Lazarus and his crowd of followers laughing and yelling, “There is no death!” many times over. If staged with all the grandeur that O’Neill intended, Lazarus Laughed might have been a sight to see, but on the page it mostly comes across as a bit silly.