Gabriel Byrne and Jessica LangePhoto: Joan Marcus
It is almost pointless, almost futile, to start
comparing one production of Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical masterpiece “Long
Day’s Journey Into Night” from another as each in turn resides in memory for
different reasons. The thing about British director Jonathan Kent’s production for
the Roundabout Theatre Company now at the American Airlines Theatre is not that
it may not be the most definitive but that it may be the most atmospherically
haunting. That doesn’t preclude me saying that the one in 1988 with Jason Robards
and Colleen Dewhurst, under the direction of Jose Quintero was even more or
less haunting than the next one I recall a decade or more later in which Robert
Falls directed Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Dennehy, Philip Seymour Hoffman and
Robert Sean Leonard (OMG that was stupendous.)
In addressing what many consider to be the greatest play in
American theater literature, Kent need not have any qualms that his production
may not have nailed every personal and shared pain felt by the members of the
Tyrone Household. What we get is pretty darned good, that is if spending nearly
four hours with three alcoholics and a morphine addict is your idea of well-spent
time. For me, I’m not willing to concede that the current and quite formidable
company has altered any ideas or fixed notions I may have about the play.
Others, I mean many others, who claim to have been
transformed by the works of O’Neill are apt to say about this epic that it deserves
its place at the top of the heap. It seems that every production tries as hard
as it can to re-validate the greatness of this unwieldy and emotionally
excessive masterpiece. Maybe a decade or more between productions is as obligatory
as it is for his other lengthy “masterpiece” “The Iceman Cometh, ” but don’t get
me started on that one.
As for this play, Kent’s assured contentment with the text is
notable as is the inevitable deliberateness of the play’s characters to get
from one drink to another in this sorrowful play. Give the Tyrones their due as
they face their most tragic memories with the greatest amount of poignancy during
one embroiled summer day in 1912. This is a family that also relishes its
free-for-alls, but not one that necessarily makes the one with the loudest
voice the winner. It is important to know that they are shadows of O’Neill’s
own family.
I’m not embarrassed to admit that I love Jessica Lange on
film and on stage and that she is undoubtedly giving her greatest performance
as the hopelessly morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone. She may be “acting” up a storm
but I was with her every step of the way as the desperately mean-spirited
avenger with a ravishing noble spirit.
I was mesmerized by Lange’s fidgeting, her self-conscious
twitches, her hallucinatory meanderings, and her increasingly wistful voice that could
at any moment disappear into a vapor, a state of retreat from the enveloping fog
that was slowly shrouding their dilapidating summer home.
Behind the virile posturing, the implacable vanity, and the
devilishly Irish eyes that seem, at times, to know more than they care to share
is Gabriel Byrne, who, as the aging matinee idol James Tyrone - now a miserly
and alcoholic patriarch - finds enough dramatic contours in the aborted dreams
of his past and the pained realities of the present to commandingly hold up his
end of the incessant bickering, accusing, recriminating and even lying household.
Let us anticipate that this superb O’Neill interpreter who played James Tyrone
in the acclaimed revival of “A Moon for the Misbegotten” and Con Melody in “A
Touch of the Poet” (both on Broadway) continues to shed even more light on O’Neill’s
men.
Michael Shannon is an intriguing presence, almost like an
outsider except that he drinks like an insider. He is effectively volcanic and cynical
as James Tyrone Jr., the wastrel actor and alcoholic older son who has
attempted to reach out to the younger brother he both envies and protects. And John
Gallagher, Jr. also seems to be from another planet at times but eventually
steps up to the plate as Edmond, the young, poetic and consumptive seafarer
whose burning love-hate relationship with his family is destined to make him
the autobiographical eyes and ears of the Tyrones. Representing the young
O’Neill, he is splendid and touching as he emphasizes Edmond’s sensitive
brooding nature. It takes a while for him to rise to the challenge of each new
tidal wave of emotion as it threatens to drown him. Colby Minifie has the right
Irish flavor as the family’s summer servant whose duties invite a little nip on
occasion.
The fog really rolls in with a vengeance in designer Tom Pye’s
evocative setting, the gloomy living room of the Tyrone’s summer home. Natasha
Katz’s lighting masterfully considers James Tyrone’s unwillingness to pay the
electric bill. But who needs light when the actors and the audience are already
either blinded by the booze or by the haze.
“Long Days Journey Into Night” (through June 26)
American
Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street
