The Europeans on Broadway

Abstract

Henry James’s early work The Europeans has proved surprisingly difficult to adapt, both on screen and in the theater. This article reconstructs a version of the play Eugenia, written in 1957 by the dramatist Randolph Carter and starring Tallulah Bankhead, which attracted indifferent reviews and ran for a short time on Broadway. The play rewrites a considerable amount of the source-text, but perhaps the main reason for its short run was the problems experienced by the leading actress, rather than any problems experienced by the company with the adapted text