The Metropolitan Playhouse, which has aired several works by Eugene O'Neill's colleagues in the Provincetown Players, presented a virtual production of Susan Glaspell's The Outside in early February 2021. At under a half hour, The Outside is one of Glaspell's shortest and lesser-known plays. The 1917 drama is set in a building modeled on Peaked Hill Bars, a lifesaving station in Provincetown near a treacherous stretch of coastline. Two years later, James O'Neill would purchase the building as a home for Eugene and his second wife, Agnes Boulton. The Outside premiered on a Provincetown bill with Floyd Dell's The Angel Intrudes and Mike Gold's now-lost Down the Airshaft. Despite Edna St. Vincent Millay's stage debut in the Dell piece, audiences considered The Outside the star of the evening.
Staging plays for streaming is challenging, to say the least. Glaspell's opening stage directions are so lengthy they're practically O'Neillian. Even...
