Preparing to listen to the episode on Dunsany's Golden Doom, I read the first two plays of 'Five Plays' by Dunsany: 'The Gods of the Mountain' and 'The Golden Doom' (then I stopped and ordered the book, because 1. my ebook version was very bad automatically digitized, almost unreadable, and 2. I liked it too much to not order a decent book, so I could read on). I really enjoyed reading the plays, but liked them even more after I listened to the great podcast episode: there are so much aspects and layers in the play(s)! They are intriguing, funny and very well written.
S.T. Joshi (the famous H.P. lovecraft scholar) says a lot about Dunsany's plays in his book 'The Weird Tale'. He mentions Dunsany's first plays (like his Five Plays) as among the most popular plays in his time. 'The Gods of the Mountains' was in particular highly praised by Lovecraft and Dunsany himself (and Joshi) as very innovative. But Joshi doesn't say anything about The Golden Doom (although he discusses the Five Plays as a whole).
I really like the playing with the dramatic genres and conventions in The Golden Doom, while it serves a higher purpose (not just as an experiment), as is said in the podcast. I also like the ambiguity in the end: is the whole play a chain of coincidences (like in a farce) or is it a joke of the gods (then it could be a sort of parable)? It really doesn't matter, because in both cases it is a highly ironic play.
So, is there something weird in The Golden Doom? I think, when one looks at just this play, it isn't obvious because of the ambiguity (are 'the stars' real or not?). But when we look at the whole of Dunsany's early work it is more likely that it is. Lovecraft coined his term 'weird fiction' with writers like Dunsany and Machen in mind.
One of the most 'weird' sentences in early weird fiction (according to Lovecraft - and I agree) is to be found in The Gods of the Mountain (as I said, one of the other Five Plays). It is this: 'Rock should not walk in the evening'. That it IS 'weird' is even more obvious when I quote two sentences of the same page: 'but when we see rock walking it is terrible, it is terrible.' and 'When children see it they do not understand'.
Well, this is certainly a great endorsement for doing "The Gods of the Mountain," so look for that soon(ish).
I really enjoyed this play, too, whether or not anything "weird" or "supernatural" is going on in it. It has a real sense of the world not being what it seems to be, which I think is a hallmark of, at least, the Lovecraftian brand of it.