Review - Long Day's Journey Into Night

When Roundabout Theatre Company announced they would be doing a revival of Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece Long Day's Journey Into Night, I begged one of my Tony voter bosses to please let me be his guest. It's one of my favorite plays - the 2003 revival with Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave is one of my top theater-going experiences.  My heart was broken again and again (you all know how I love to have my heart broken in the theater). And this cast looked, on paper, just as dynamite.  I'm fortunate that my very kind, very handsome Tony voter boss said yes.

We decided to see yesterday's matinee, since the show is nearly four hours long and my very kind, very handsome Tony voter boss has a very long train ride home.  Of course, a four-hour matinee took me out of my work day completely, but it was worth it.  I will admit that I was not as blown away by this production as I was by the one I saw previously, but I still came out thinking, "my god, that's just a cracking good play!"

I cannot imagine doing Long Day's Journey Into Night twice in one day, so god love the performers for giving it their all yesterday afternoon.  Especially Jessica Lange, about whom I was a little unsure before the performance, but she was terrific.  She showed the many shades of Mary and the heartbreaking way she couldn't look anyone in the eye after she came back downstairs post-fix was sadly wonderful.  I did find her final monologue a little fussy, but I think that can be supported by the text.  In fact, a lot of the quibbles I mention could just be interpretation, because I guess they're all supported by the text but I didn't quite 'get' them. Anyway, moving on.  Lange and Gabriel Byrne, as her husband James, had a terrific chemistry and you could see how they loved each other and destroyed each other over and over.  Byrne was terrific as the past-his-prime actor, though I thought he could've used a touch more hammy actor bombast earlier in the play, since his sons describe him that way, but he found a vulnerability inside the tyrant that was very touching.  Byrne is always a sensitive, detailed actor and I appreciated that sensitivity and detail, while still wanting maybe something more, to give even more arc and tragedy to his monologue late in the play where he describes how he became the man he is today.

photo credit: Sara Krulwich

As the sons, John Gallagher Jr and Michael Shannon also have terrific chemistry - chemistry that shows the camaraderie and also the tension between them. Gallagher may seem a bit too robust for someone on his way to a sanatorium for consumption, but he's also very smart and so touching in his devotion to his mother.  Shannon is balls to the wall throughout, especially in his climactic drunk scene.  He's always such a cerebral actor, finding his way to the truth of the character through intellect, and it heightens Jamie's sadness that he is aware of just how pathetic he is but is completely unable to change.

photo credit: Joan Marcus

That's part of the brilliance of Long Day's Journey Into Night.  The inability to change. They all long for a connection to each other, the love they need, but yet they just can't stop themselves from the antagonism, the self-pity and the self-destruction.  I also noticed, maybe for the first time, the repetition in some of the dialogue to, I guess, assign the roles each family member plays, such as Edmund's "Stop talking, Mother."  That became so sad after a while and I don't think I'd ever noticed it before.  Also, I'm sure I've mentioned before how sad families depicted onstage make me sad and the Tyrone family is no exception.  I was always on the verge of tears because of the story, because of the dialogue, because of the storytelling methodology, and by the way these people were reaching and would never find.  But I will admit that I never actually broke down and really felt the agony, which was a tad disappointing.

Ultimately, I think it was the direction that sort of let me down.  Everything was a little museum-y, a little surface-y (again, I was on the verge of tears throughout, but never quite got there, which is really unlike me) and the blocking was...strange.  The actors kept walking from one chair to another to sit down and the repetitive nature was odd.  It wasn't as if the characters are always repetitively walking from piece of furniture to piece of furniture, because, well, wouldn't each character naturally gravitate to one section of the room? One spot that is always theirs?  In this production, everyone sat everywhere, because they didn't seem moored.  Again, I guess you could say, as Mary does, that this house isn't really a "home" and no one is moored there, but it just didn't seem organic or character-driven to me, it seemed director-imposed.  In my humble, I'm-not-a-director opinion, of course.  I also didn't quite get the set or the lights - at one point, there was a bright light shining on one of the opaque window treatments and the glare bothered me and took me out of the play.  I began to think, is someone back there?  Will they be coming out with candles?  I don't think I should've been taken out of the play by lighting, so that was a bother.  Also, with regards again to everyone walking around just to sit somewhere, if characters were always going to sit on the pieces downstage, shouldn't they have been some sort of stool or small chair?  Having blocks, or little coffee tables, up front, just so people can sit, was strange.  Again, I guess it could be explained via the text that James Tyrone is too cheap to buy real furniture, but it honestly didn't seem that way to me.

Ah well.  I guess I just didn't completely buy what they were selling me, production-wise. I did mainly enjoy myself because the performances were mostly terrific and the play itself is just so danged fantastic.  I guess I was just disappointed that my heart wasn't broken again and again.  That's why you go to see Long Day's Journey Into Night, isn't it? Perhaps thinking that way was my first mistake...

ADDENDUM:  I can't believe I forgot to mention the matinee audience yesterday.  I guess I only remember to talk about my seat neighbors when they behave badly.  Yesterday, when we arrived, I expressed concern to my very nice, very handsome Tony voter boss.  I thought that the stereotypical matinee audience would be out of control by the end of the play.  I was so wrong.  I didn't hear one cell phone go off.  I didn't hear one person ask their companion "What did he say?"  I didn't hear any candy rustling.  I didn't see people getting up and leaving at various times throughout the admittedly long play.  I didn't see anyone texting.  There was a quiet respectful silence the whole afternoon.  Yes, my little-bit-restless-during-the-first-act seat neighbor didn't come back for the second act, but he wasn't misbehaving that much during the first.  So I was wrong to pre-judge the crowd and I'm so glad.  : )