Long Day's Journey into Night - Roundabout Theater Company at the American Airlines Theater

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Gabriel Byrne and Jessica Lange
Photo: 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