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Play by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Robin Phillips.
Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece unfolds over one day in the life of the troubled Tyrone family - an extraordinary psychological epic, centring around the Mother's painful decline into morphine addiction as her family disintegrate into physical and spiritual ruin, is one of the finest plays in the history of American theatre.
Long Day's Journey Into Night was voted 5th place in the Royal National Theatre's Survey of the Twentieth-Century 'Most Significant' Plays.
Starring Jessica Lange as 'Mary Tyrone' and Charles Dance as 'James Tyrone' with Paul Rudd, Paul Nicholls and Olivia Colman.
LYRIC Theatre Previewed 8 November, Opened 21 November 2000, Closed 3 March 2001
Extracts from the reviews:
"Here are Jessica Lange and Charles Dance in what's probably the finest, and certainly the most emotionally raw, of American plays - and last night both were acting way beyond what I had patronisingly assumed to be their abilities... Lange is, if anything, more adventurous and surprising... Always she's riveting. So is Robin Phillips's production. And so is O'Neill's great play." The Times
"...[Jessica Lange] is fabulous in this, even if it is occasionally hard to square her sex-bomb status from the movies with her portrait of a decaying dame in the grips of her addiction... The great thing about Robin Phillips' production is that it catches the mordant comedy of this Irish-American clan constantly sniping and putting each other down while all are stuck in the same leaky boat. The household is presided over James - Charles Dance on terrific form - a whisky-addled actor and a miser too mean to get proper treatment for his tubercular son Edmund, played with wry, tragic amusement by Paul Nicholls. Meanwhile, the other son (paul Rudd, also excellent) pours the booze down his throat and scorn on everyone else. You can almost hear the crash and burn of the American dream. The last time I saw this play in London it starred Jack Lemmon and a young Kevin Spacey in the cast. By a whisker, I preferred that producction. This, though, is a majestic piece of theatre and does a great play proud." The Express
"...Jessica Lange, as the morphine-addicted mother in Eugene O'Neill's epic play A Long Day's Journey Into Night, can take the breath away on a stage as well as on film. Moreover, Robin Phillips's production of this play about a family so dysfunctional they make the Windsors look like the Waltons, is beautifully judged, bringing out how closely the harrowing and the hilarious come to resemble each other in O'Neill's lengthy guts-out-on-the-table piece... As her retired thesp husband, Charles Dance, with his peeled-prawn sensitive eyes and witty, dismissive timing, gives a cleverly low-key performance, showing you all the ache of remembered desire in the way his fingers sometimes itch to caress and comfort her. But it's the younger generation, Paul Rudd and Paul Nicholls, who are sensational as the two sons. Their scenes together are both terribly funny and truly agonising. This pair expertly capture the electric intimacy and rivalry of youths who have, on the one hand, been set at odds by their difficult, addictive parents and, on the other, been brought too close together by the shared burden of them...." The Independent
"...[Jessica] Lange, in a magnificently unsentimental performance, reminds us that Mary is a woman who constantly twists the knife in the family's wounds. You can argue that her addiction is to blame; and Lange captures astonishingly Mary's transition during the day from nervous, hankie-twisting tension to dreamy narcotic escape. But, without judging the character, Lange shows it is her endless picking at the familial scabs that is the real source of agony. Correspondingly, Charles Dance suggests that James Tyrone's parsimony stems from childhood poverty and his Dickensian sweatshop experience, and he brings out superbly the man's muted despair and quiet love. Even if Paul Rudd as the self-loathing Jamie and Paul Nicholls as the sensitive Edmund offer more familiar performances, you have the exhilarating experience of rediscovering the great American dramatic classic. You go in expecting an endurance-test; you emerge as if having seen O'Neill's play for the first time." The Guardian
"Do we need another Hollywood star treading the London stage? No sooner has Home Alone prodigy Macaulay Culkin settled into Madame Melville, and Daryl Hannah braved The Seven Year Itch, than along comes Jessica Lange, slipping into Eugene O'Neill's classic 1941 drama of family dysfunction... Well, the answer is that if all the imports are as good as Ms Lange, then by all means, let's stuff Shaftesbury Avenue with Tinseltown's finest. Unfortunately, while one can only applaud this fine actress's decision to make a return visit to the West End after starring in Peter Hall's A Streetcar Named Desire three years ago, it has to be said that Robin Phillips's production doesn't do her talents justice. This three-and-a-half-hour production takes a good while to draw you in, largely because of some lacklustre turns from Lange's male co-stars... Lange creates a haunting impression of a mother and wife suffocating herself and those around her with incessant neurosis and paranoia... What any production needs to do is to offset this sad, self-consciously meek creature with some overt fire and acrimony But for much of the first two acts, the level of tension is no worse than the average Christmas lunch. Charles Dance's failed actor and money-grubbing landowner of a husband sits stolidly at the living-room table, occasionally deigning to frown. And where is the passion and vitriol that should drive his sons - the high-living waster James Jr (a disappointing Paul Rudd) and the aspirant but cunsumptive Edmund (an inappropriately healthy-looking Paul Nicholls)? The problem is partly O'Neill's doing. The play's static, verbose quality naturally de-animates the characters..." The Daily Telegraph |
