Marco Millions

Marco Millions (1928), a play by Eugene O'Neill. [Guild Theatre, 92 perf.] As a young man, Marco Polo ( Alfred Lunt) is sent to China on business in the company of his father and uncle. He is so determined to succeed that he has no conception of the deep love Kukachin ( Margalo Gillmore), the Kaan's granddaughter, holds for him. He piles commercial success upon commercial success until he eventually returns to Venice, where he lives in ostentatious luxury, unaware that Kukachin has pined for his love and died for lack of it. Marco, after all, is the eternal merchant. So eternal, in fact, that as the houselights come back on and the audience prepares to leave, there is Marco, the tired businessman, rising from a front row seat and heading for the limousine that awaits him outside. Although many critics agreed with Brooks Atkinson of the Times that the Theatre Guild's “satiric pageant” was “an original, powerful and searching drama,” the play's attack on pervasive, obsessive commercialism had little appeal for the tired businessmen it mocked. Revivals in 1930 and 1964 were no more successful.