Diff'rent

Diff'rent is a two-act tragedy written by American playwright Eugene O'Niell.[1] The story concerns a woman who rejects her fiancée over a single infidelity and much later becomes engaged to another man who turns out to have poor character. The first man commits suicide, and she regrets her choice.

The play premiered in 1921 at the Princess Theatre on Broadway when theatres reopened following closures due to the Spanish flu. A second production ran on Broadway in 1938.

Background

The Spanish flu ended officially in 1920, the year before the play premiered. The Roaring Twenties was at its dawn, and World War I ended three years earlier. Young women in the audience may have seen a world in 1918 where men we "over the hill or as fresh as the grass", meaning that available men for marriage during the war were either older or younger than the women seeking husbands. Like COVID, the Spanish Flu caused people to stay isolated in their homes. The end of the pandemic allowed people to socialize again. The title of the show Diff'rent makes use of the way people speak in the village. Making use of the way a certain community spoke was a device often used in O'Niell plays.

Plot

Setting: The parlor of home on a side street of a seaport village in New England.

Emma is engaged to an older man, a sea captain named Caleb, in 1890. She discovers that he was briefly unfaithful while at sea and calls off the wedding. In the seaport village, the women tended to accept the promiscuity of the men who work at sea. Emma however, expected her future husband to be of different nature than the sailors in the village.

30 years go by, but the aging sea captain still hopes that he can marry his fiancé, Emma. Meanwhile, she has met a younger man, Benny, who has returned to the village after World War I. Benny is open about having "known" various women in France. Emma, by this time, is not troubled by this fact from his past, but she does not know that Benny was actually a grifter and charlatan. Caleb later arrives and notices how her home and her attire have been modernized from how they had been when he was engaged to Emma. Caleb explains to Emma who Benny really is. He explains also points out that he had always been honest with her. Emma says that she is going to marry Benny, but after Caleb leaves and Benny returns, she regrets her choice. Emma later learns of Caleb's suicide, and she begins to exit, intending to join Caleb.

Productions

Premiere

Diff'rent premiered on April 4, 1921 at the Princess Theatre on Broadway. It was the first show for the theatre after what were called the Princess Musicals, a series of musicals that took place in the theater from 1913-1918. The theater had been closed during the Spanish Flu pandemic and reopened with Diff'rent. Emma was played by Mary Blair, Caleb by James Light, and Benny by Charles Eliis.

1938 Broadway revival

A second production took place at Maxine Elliott's Theatre on Broadway, opening on January 25, 1938. Leonore Sorsby was Emma, Erford Gage was Caleb, and Frank Daly was Benny.