Long Day's Journey Plagued by Unrelenting Tension

Long Day's Journey Into Night

by Eugene O'Neill

directed by Edward Gilbert

at the Huntington Theatre

through November 22

The Huntington Theatre's production of Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece Long day's Journey Into Night is a perfect example of why America's greatest playwright has fallen into disrepute among critics in the past several years.

There is no doubt that the performance is intense; no rendition short of a farce can escape the play's inherent potency, Director Edward Gilbert makes a grave mistake, though, when he sustains the play's intensity from start to finish (a total of three hours and ten minutes), a move that results in tediousness and a slumbering audience.

The problem: As O'Neill wrote it, Journey was to be much more sophisticated than unrelenting tension. It is about explosion. It is about motion. It is a rare glimpse at a family's life when all the pent up anger, frustration, and unspoken truths are suddenly released.

The four characters struggle frantically to choose between continuing to live out the fallacy of their family structure and the subconscious awareness that an acknowledgement of that fallacy will destroy the thin threads of unity among them.

None of the characters escape this familial upheaval because they sit, idle and frustrated, only to erupt at any sign of personal weakness in the others. It seems that every third line of the play begins with an apology for someone's biting, bitter outburst a line earlier. These scenes show volatile, yet sensitive, characters who have outlived their image of themselves. Years of family life have dulled them to each's hangups and worries about the rest of the group's behavior. For example, one brother's "worldly" advice turns out to be a jealous ploy to destroy his sibling with alcohol and apathy.

The explosive nature of these repressed emotions does not appear, however, in Gilbert's version of the drama. Gilbert's production comes across as simply three pissedoff alcoholics, one of whom is consumptive, trying to hide their thoughts and emotions from the aged drug-addicted mother-figure. The tension exists but, since this it never remits, its effect on the audience is lost through the resulting absence of transition and change. Apologies become stiff and insincere and there is no room for noticeable reaction to events within the plot.

The cast falls into line with the director's narrow vision of the work. As a group they lack depth. The play begins with a scene between the father James Tyrone (Jack Aranson) and the mother Mary Cavan Tyrone (Patricia Conolly). The actors' forced voices and exaggerated facial expressions at first mislead the audience into thinking that they are watching a high-society comedy or drama instead of anything resembling O'Neill.

When the two sons, James, Jr. (Jonathan Walker) and Edmund (Robert Sean Leonard--Neil of Dead Poet's Society fame) take the stage and the mother exits, the audience sees the characters in the state in which they will remain for another three hours.

Aranson's anger and intensity is believable, and his powerful voice overshadows the two younger actors. The character's compassion and occasional pangs of guilt are never realized, however. Leonard and Walker also have problems showing any sort of emotion other than apathy and disgust.

The female actors bring the only hints of color and life to the show. As an interesting quirk, Patricia Conolly's initially strained performance improves as her character's drug abuse increases. Her greatest moment comes during the play's final monologue, leaving the audience with a disturbing eeriness at curtain-fall. Sue-Anne Morrow as the servant Cathleen is one welcome release from the monotony and moroseness of the other characters because she moves excitedly around the stage.

In the end, the Huntington's production is not unconvincing, but director Gilbert's failure to very the onstage mood makes for three hours of restless seat-sliding. Perhaps a more traditional interpretation would have been more successful than the Huntington's, whose only connection with O'Neill is the occasional blast of the fog horn that reminds the audience of the setting.