REVIEW OF LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT Tom Wells

 Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill

O’Neill (the Nobel Prize winner Eugene, not Joseph of Netherland, just to avoid confusion) wrote this three-hour family shouting match between 1939 and 1941 with instructions that it not be published until 25 years after his death. His wife ignored his wishes and it premiered less than three years after O’Neill shuffled off to Tir Tairngire. It went on to win the Tony for Best Play of 1956 and a Pulitzer Prize in 1957. Moreover, per Wikipedia, “The tragedy Long Day's Journey into Night is often included on lists of the finest U.S. plays in the 20th century, alongside Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.”  

Heady company, especially when you consider the scathing reviews of a healthy JFDI majority, which found it unrelentingly depressing, repetitive and “yet another story about angry Irish drunks.” And it is certainly all three of those. But it is also a showcase for wide acting range, as characters regularly go from incandescent anger to maudlin self-pity to gentle understanding, often in just three lines of speech. 

I first saw this play on ABC television in 1975 with an all-British cast that included Lawrence Olivier, Constance Cummings and a very young Ronald Pickup. My reaction then was that the acting was superb, and I was shocked that the mother—anyone’s mother—could be a “dope fiend” before the 1950s. This time around, I watched the version with Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher, mainly because a friend had seen it on Broadway back in 1987 and I wanted to discuss it with him. It is meant as a vehicle for Lemmon, but he is woefully miscast, while Peter Gallagher surprises with some real acting chops. 

Which just goes to show that, with few exceptions (see “The Ferryman”) plays should be seen and not read. In particular, they should be seen live, because it is only in the theatre that you can feel the emotional effort that is essential to evoking empathy, especially for the seriously flawed characters in this exhausting work.

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