Emperor Jones, The

Emperor Jones, The (1920), a play by Eugene O'Neill. [Neighborhood Playhouse, 204 perf.] The African‐American Pullman porter, Brutus Jones ( Charles S. Gilpin), escapes from the prison he has been sent to as the result of a fight in a crap game and flees to a West Indies island. There he establishes himself as emperor, running an abusive, corrupt dictatorial regime. A white Cockney trader, Smithers ( Jasper Deeter), warns him that the incessant drum beating signifies an imminent revolt, but Jones is cocky and assures Smithers only a silver bullet can kill him. The revolt forces him to flee and hide in the forest where eventually the troops of Lem ( Charles Ellis), a native chief, find him and kill him with a silver bullet that Lem has had specially made. Looking at the body, Smithers remarks, “Where's yer 'igh an' mighty airs now, yer bloomin' Majesty? Silver bullets! Gawd blimey, but yer died in the 'eight of style, any'ow.” Based loosely on an incident in Haitian history, the play was originally called The Silver Bullet. George Jean Nathan thought it a compelling drama “touched by a visionary ecstasy.” The Provincetown Players production was an early attempt by O'Neill at expressionism, albeit framed in two realistic scenes, with innovative settings designed by Robert Edmond Jones that viewed the Caribbean jungle through Jones's nightmarish point of view. This stylized scenery and a persistent beating of drums in the background accentuated the theme of modern man destroyed by a belligerent civilization. This play has been revived on several occasions, was a standard in the repertory of the Hedgerow Theatre, and remained popular with little theatre and college groups for decades.