Long Day’s Journey Into Night
Eugene O’Neill
Directed by Richard Eyre
Set and Costume design by Rob Howell
A Bristol Old Vic Production
Wyndham’s Theatre, London
Friday 16th January 2018, 19.30
CAST
Lesley Manville – Mary Tyrone
Jeremy Irons – James Tyrone
Matthew Beard – Edmund Tyrone
Rory Keenan –Jamie Tyrone
Jessica Regan – Cathleen
The production started in Bristol in 2016, with Lesley Manville and Jeremy Irons in the lead roles, which are revived on its move to the West End. Since then, Lesley Manville has received a 2018 Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread. Michael Billington points out that both leads have improved, and that it’s 15 minutes longer. An even longer day’s journey into night, then. He should know the play as it is included in his 101 Greatest Plays of All Time.
The play is a legend in itself. Eugene O’Neill’s play dates from 1941. He wrote that it should not be performed until 25 years after his death, since it was so intensely autobiographical, and added that it should never be produced on stage. O’Neill died in 1953. They promptly knocked off 22 years off his request, and published then produced it in 1956, when it received the Tony for best play and O’Neill was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize, his fourth. The argument was that his intention was to spare his son the details, and that his son had committed suicide in 1950, so the instruction was no longer relevant. As in the play, ‘happy families.’ ‘Edmund’ in the play, taking the name of his deceased brother, stands in for Eugene himself. The first names are otherwise the same as the originals, his father, mother and brother. The baby brother Edmund who died, becomes Eugene. He changed O’Neill to Tyrone, the traditional Ulster region of the O’Neill clan. The events of 1912 actually took place in 1912. The house in the story is the O’Neill’s beach house in Connecticut, named after his father’s touring play, The Count of Monte Christo. The introduction to the text says that it’s far easier to list the few non-biographical facts than vice-versa.
I’ve read it, read about it, but never seen it. I’d been told that Long Day’s Journey Into Night was the pinnacle of 20th century American drama, the American equivalent of Hamlet. It is an “exam pass notes” play.
A quote from my review of Ah! Wilderness:
There’s personal history here. American Drama was a third year option in American Studies at university. Having done Drama subsidiary, I was written in for it. A summer spent reading Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder and Arthur Miller in preparation, and I opted for American Slavery instead. And I do really like Arthur Miller.
It was a daft decision in retrospect, as I’d done most of the basic reading. On the other hand, I still believe so many years later that American theatre’s greatest achievement is the musical and that wasn’t on the syllabus. ‘Serious theatre” seems more separate than in Britain, addressed to audiences who would appreciate references to and quotes from Baudelaire, Swinburne, Dowson and Shakespeare, and who knew how to spell and pronounce Nietschze. All are mentioned in this play. Too many serious American plays tend to share the same features … small cast, one set, long agonized speeches, family setting. Even the classical rule of one location, one day. The Miller I most like are outside the frame, The Crucible and View From The Bridge, not the one always compared with Long Day’s Journey Into Night which is Death of A Salesman.
I don’t see the play as a masterpiece, which sets me apart from most reviews before I start. O’Neill apparently thought it was 113 minutes long, and it turned out to run four hours in 1956. This version says 75 minutes Act One, 105 minutes Act 2, making three hours. It was three hours 15 minutes tonight. Plus an interval.
Now three hours 15 minutes is not exceptional for Shakespeare or Chekhov, but they have a larger cast, far more scenes and multiple plots with narrative movement, plus a lot of action. When it’s mainly one person speaking, or two people speaking with very little physical activity, it is truly long, however brilliant the actors, and they were all brilliant. They “say it” rather than “show it” too. This one has a marvellous set and an intricate and subtle lighting plot too.
I don’t know if the play has a plot, so much as a series of repeated recriminations. James, the father is an actor who is wealthy after playing one part on tour for years, but considered a miser by his critical family. Mary, convent educated, married beneath her. Their first child was Jamie. Then they had a baby, Eugene. Aged 7, the jealous Jamie disobeyed orders and went into the baby’s room with measles. The baby caught it and died. James and Mary were away on tour. They had another baby, Edmund. After the birth in a small town on tour, Mary was given morphine by a quack doctor. She is now addicted and in spite of repeated cures, is lapsing yet again. Both incidents can be blamed on the miserly James … he forced her on tour, abandoning Eugene. He got the cheapest doctor. Son Jamie is also a actor, devoted to drink and whoring. Edmund has run off to sea but returned. Edmund has TB, waiting for a diagnosis through the first half. Mary’s father died of TB. She won’t face reality. James is still trying to turn off lights and tries to get Edmund into a cheap state (cheapskate) sanatorium. O’Neill’s great line here is that James will pay for anything for his son … within reason. Incidentally, I think it’s Jamie who says to Edmund, “If you can’t be good, be careful.” Did O’Neill invent that famous saying, or merely repeat it? Well, whatever, there’s plenty to give rise to recrimination.
Jeremy Irons as James Tyrone
The part of James, the actor father, has been played by a parade of theatrical greats, with Jeremy Irons the current one. James O’Neill had, like James Tyrone, been typecast. Eugene’s real dad had played in The Count of Monte Christo on tour around 6000 Times (though 4000 in the introduction to the play text).
Lesley Manville as Mary
Lesley Manville plays the mother, Mary. Her award winning descent into alcohol-sodden in Mike Leigh’s Another Year was a great performance. She does descents superbly, here twitching and repetitive in finely controlled degrees depending on Mary’s last morphine hit. O’Neill writes her part best of all, I feel, with the nervy repetition and going over the same problems and greivances. On the other hand, the power of the text is her repetition … and that is, er, repetitive. She is obsessed with her hair (the constant itchiness of addiction), her arthritic hands and her sons. My companion noted a negative … in spite of the constant fiddling with her hair, it stays neat. As she has so many retreats to “the spare room” where she takes the morphine, it would have been easy to add gradual disarray. In fact it looks less neat in the photos.
The trouble with the play structurally is that Mary is absent for all but the last couple of minutes of Act Four, and she is sorely missed. We have long decided she is the most interesting character. Lesley Manville has charisma. It is the best role. Like The Duchesss of Malfi, losing your female lead long before the end is a plotting error.
Matthew Beard, tall very thin and pale, was excellent casting for Edmund the Consumptive. Rory Keenan is a scruffy, combatative Jamie. You can believe he intended ill, even at seven.
Act Four feels interminable (and after the interval, we have already had Act 3), and is a series of long two person debates. Act 3 was Mary and Kathleen the servant as a duo at the start and gets a lot of humour. Jessica Regan is the Irish maid, adding a lot of plot in describing her errand to get Mary’s prescription. Very funny.
Act 4: Matthew Beard as Edmond, Jeremy Irons as James
Act 4 has James and Edmond, then Edmond and Jamie. As Edmond is describing his experiences at sea, this, as O’Neill himself, was dear to the writer but the text waxes poetic at too great a length. James’ theatrical anecdotes and hammed up Shakespeare is more interesting in itself (and beautifully weighted by Jeremy Irons) but there is a lot of it and we are talking alternating monologues rather than true dialogue.
I found some of it hard work, heavy going, and indeed it had emptied a few seats after the interval. The second half was a full 30 minutes longer than the first. They seemed to try and cut the length by taking the first twenty minutes or so much too fast. I was surprised by the amount of (mild) humour they drew out of the lines. It is in there to be found, and this cast found it.
The play has irony on addiction. Basically three alcoholics are criticising an opiates addict. That’s interesting. The three do good drunks, just as she does good morphine. (As a footnote, O’Neill’s mother did successfully stop it in 1914).
I wondered about accents. I’d need an American to comment (please do) but to me they all sounded “British actors doing American very well, but with some lapses into British.” It made me think of The Captive Queen a week ago where they had an elaborate frame to justify Northern English accents. I’ve heard Shakespeare played in American accents, and I have no problem whatsoever. That has greater distance. Can you mention Broadway, the Midwest, “automobile,” being “fresh”, using “gotten” without doing an American accent? Nearly all the rest of the text could be played in English accents, yet we never think of doing that … switching to natural accents regardless of location … with plays written after about 1890. Would it work?
Did O’Neill know the difference between Frankenstein (the doctor) and the monster he created? There are two text references to “Frankensteins” which here mean “monsters.” O’Neill was writing after the great James Whale films of the 1930s too. Was the interest in Frankenstein an anachronism for 1912? Mary Shelley’s original novel was far more famous after the films, than before them. Was it O’Neill or the character he was writing who got it wrong?
How do you assess the play? When we were doing English Language Teaching shows, 75% were our comedy sketch shows. 25% were plays. The school’s brochure mentioned Waiting for Godot, and we duly did it every few months, after all we had a Vladimir and Estragon who knew their parts. I watched ranks of students sitting gamely through it, they must have been bored and able to understand little, but they knew it was Serious Drama and they stuck with it. Then the four star reviews for this are a near unbroken rank (see below). Lots of superlatives; masterpiece appears more than once. Yet only two of them gave this ‘masterpiece’ five stars. The Independent “an unmissable masterpiece” 4 stars. How do you earn five then?
The power of the performances (and direction and set) make you think it impossible to give it less than four. Lesley Manville’s performance will be a contender for best of the year. Is enjoyment a factor? I enjoyed my evening at Lady Windermere’s Fan far more than this a few weeks ago, but I gave it just three stars. To me, Wilde is intrinsically in a different league to O’Neill. Ah, I’m shallow then. I’m actually judging the entire genre of classic, serious American drama. That’s why I’ve avoided the last few big Tennessee Williams London productions. It gets my shallow, out on a limb, three.
***
TOILETS
West End horrors. Disgusting, cramped. A recent article said strict planning laws preventing improvements were killing these listed West End Theatres and they have to be relaxed to allow modern and more toilets in these old buildings. The theatre owners are trying, it said. Let’s hope they succeed.
THEATRE MANAGEMENT
Some one in the audience was taken ill … it sounded as if they had vomited. There was a great deal of fuss and consternation and audience and usher movement in a crucial early Mary-Edmond scene, which the actors cruised through with aplomb. I have seen this twice before in theatres, and both the other times a stage manager walked on and stopped the action so the problem could be cleared properly (Stratford and Bath). The actors there had stayed on stage, and paced or sat in character. Then seamlessly resumed the play when signaled. It is a better option than the audience being too distracted to follow the action on stage as happened here. They would have been better to pause here. They didn’t seem to have a contingency plan for such an event. Most of us missed 3 or 4 minutes of the play.
AUDIENCE REACTION
Standing ovations, 90% in the stalls. Rare for England, though less rare on a Friday night. Discounting the seats vacated by the incident several rows away on the other side, we had three empty seats in front of us after the interval, and two further along our row, and three in the row behind. Around us, I’d say eleven left half way. With expensive tickets that is hard to work out, though it happens a lot in the West End with premium productions. It’s extremely rare on the South Bank. I’m told that corporates buy Friday night shows for West End productions as gifts for visitors, often foreign visitors and that is the reason for them deserting at the interval. You can’t do that with the Friend / Members reliant South Bank theatres.
Or maybe they too found it heavy going.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
The Stage’s Theatre Round-Up summarised the reviews:
If there are a few question marks over Jeremy Irons’ performance, there are none at all over Lesley Manville’s. Four-star write-ups for the production, but hers is a five-star turn.
5
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage *****
Michael Ardetti, Express *****
4
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph, ****
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times ****
David Jays, Sunday Times ****
Henry Hitchings, Evening Standard ****
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ****
Alice Saville, Time Out ****
Tim Bano, The Stage ****
Ismene Brown, The Arts Desk ****
Marianka Swain, Broadway World, ****
Will Longman, London Theatre ****
3
Kate Kellaway, The Observer ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
EUGENE O’NEILL
Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O’Neill, Young Vic, 2015.
LESLEY MANVILLE
Another Year, by Mike Leigh (FILM)
Mr Turner (FILM)
JEREMY IRONS
High Rise (FILM)
MATTHEW BEARD
Skylight by David Hare (Edward Sergeant)
The Imitation Game (FILM) (Peter Hilton)
