O'Neill wrote this play about his own family, sealed the manuscript, and instructed that it not be performed until twenty-five years after his death. His widow, believing it to be his greatest work, allowed production in 1956, three years after he died. The Tyrones are the O'Neills: the alcoholic actor father, the morphine-addicted mother, the dissolute elder son, the consumptive younger son who will become a playwright. One long day and night of recrimination and anguish. It is perhaps the greatest American play, and certainly the most devastating.