Photo credit Alan McCreadieThis Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece from one of the 20th century's greatest playwrights covers one fateful and heart-rending day, from early morning to midnight, at the seaside Connecticut home of the Tyrone family. Read more …
Mary’s back home, and seems her old self again, but for how long? As her husband James grapples with their troubled son Jamie, younger son Edmund is in poor health. Mary withdraws from the family, reaching into her version of the past.
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is an intensely moving depiction of a family struggling with addiction, truth, love and the ability to face themselves and each other.This is still a play that leaves its audiences enriched; if only by the sheer depth and truthfulness of its human understanding, and its sorrow.
Tony Cownie's production springs no surprises, but plays it fast and straight.
Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night gets a big, emotionally exhilarating telling at the theatre where it made its British premiere in 1958. If its themes of addiction, regression and dysfunctional family life are dark, director Tony Cownie fashions a compelling and humane production that draws you into its depths while leaving hope of redemption standing.
There is no easy resolution to the raw emotion on show, but the reality of those emotions, added to the extremely high standard of acting and directing, make this a production that is highly recommended.
Although an unrelentingly powerful and well-staged production, Long Day’s Journey Into Night’s pace is almost forensic in its unfolding. And whilst nearly every action and line of dialogue is vital to the exposition, that pace may result in a journey which some may feel — at a shade under three hours — is just a little too long.
Kick starts what could be an extremely promising season of theatre for the Lyceum in 2014. A must see this January.
Tony Cownie’s intelligent, smartly calibrated new production.
The text is dense and the characters are deep; while there’s very little plot, a great deal of emotional obstacles are overcome.
Consistently true to O’Neill’s conflicted autobiography, it is a very fine production of a modern American classic.
This is a rich reading of a soul-searing drama.
Preview: interview with Diana Kent
New revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night created for Edinburgh's Lyceum Theatre
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Friday January 17, 2014, until Saturday February 8, 2014. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk
RSS feed of Theatre reviews