Independent Theatre Company. The Goodwood Institute. 25 Mar 2015
Eugene O'Neill is a giant of American playwriting history. He is credited with shifting this medium from bland and mannered entertainment to a poignant search for truth in American life. Long Day's Journey Into Night was one of the last of his fifty plays. The Tyrone family, who inhabit this long and sad day that bleeds into the wee hours of the next, is a stand-in for O'Neill's own father, mother and brother, and himself, complete with their conflicts and addictions. Some biographers say that all his other plays led to this masterwork, even though he had already won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936, five years before this play. Although his wish was that it not be performed for twenty-five years, it won O'Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize in 1957, four years after his death from pneumonia. His greatness is manifest in his antecedents. In this play alone, you will see the avatars of Arthur Miller's Hap and Biff, and Tennessee Williams's Blanche du Bois.
The first thing to note in this production is the magnificent re-creation of an early 1900s American east coast cottage interior (set design: Rob Croser and David Roach, and constructed with acute attention to detail by a team led by David Roach). Bravo! The after-breakfast chatter signaling hopefulness for a fresh start at the beginning of a summer day near the ocean soon manifests with the tremors that signal subsequent earthquakes. This family has more baggage than the train to Chattanooga and two things are going to happen today to bring out the worst, and sometimes the best, in everybody.
The vicious cycle of a hazardous remark, received with hurt arising from insecurity, followed by recrimination and blame, and finally ending in a temporary truce - although belying the love these family members have for each other - is numbing. And it's a three hour production. The day's situation is left unresolved and you can't help but feel, like in 'Groundhog Day', the Tyrones will do it all over again the next day, like they did it the day before. It becomes suffocating. O'Neill's followers must have sensed this themselves as they employed significant external characters to provide foil and relief to family dysfunctionality - the gentleman caller in The Glass Menagerie, the neighbour and Uncle Ben in Death of a Salesman and the young academic couple in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? are offered as examples.
Bronwyn Ruciak does a great job as the addled mother, floating gracefully between lies and morphine. Angus Henderson has his Jamie Tyrone disguise his loafing and dissipated youth with an exuberant charm that elicited forgiveness. Benji Riggs plays the younger brother as a congenial young man and victim, with snippets of real flare. David Roach (who else?) in the male lead of the father roars and declaims most of his lines and misses opportunities for nuance. Rob Croser once again displays his directorial virtuosity in using the entire stage and getting his actors into fetching and amplifying physicalities.
Long Day's Journey Into Night contains four of the most trapped and unhappiest family characters in literature, and is the important precursor for later American dramatists standing on the shoulders of a giant, and learning from him. A must see for those who honour this transition.
David Grybowski
When: 19 to 28 March
Where: The Goodwood Institute
Bookings: trybooking.com
