Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day's Journey Into Night is considered by many to be the absolute finest American play of all time; as such, it provides actors with once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to portray characters that secure their legacy in the pantheon of “great theatre”. But what makes the play worthy of yet another revival, if other than to guarantee that the actors playing the Tyrone family members will have the chance to collect statuettes they don’t have on their mantles yet? The revival that opened at the American Airlines Theatre on April 27 has all the makings of a great production: a starry cast, a great director, a handsome set and lighting design, an opening right at the peak of “Tony eligibility”, but it often feels like visiting a mausoleum populated with fine statues that might have meant something once, but now feel merely decorative.
The ensemble is led by Jessica Lange, who plays morphine-addicted matriarch Mary Tyrone like an afterthought of the delusional characters she’s been playing in Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story series -- all mannerisms and surface lunacy, but very little in the way of depth. Many will be seduced by the fussy nature of her performance; vacant eyes, constant touching of the loose hair strands on her wig, and the hanging threads on her lace sleeves. They’re the kind of affectations that make audiences ooh and aah at the actor’s technical mastery, but fail to build on the character. There are moments in which the actress, who retains all the savage beauty she displayed in Frances, seems to want to reach out beyond what she’s giving us, but there is something always keeping her back from allowing her Mary to succumb into the abyss.
It’s perhaps the same issue that prevents her three male co-stars from achieving transcendence. As the patriarch James, Gabriel Byrne is rather pathetic to behold (a compliment to the actor) but in his endless bitterness we fail to see any glimpses of what made the character a great actor once. We are supposed to take everything at face value, merely because O’Neill wrote it so. As the eldest son James, Jr. the always electrifying Michael Shannon does manage to shine; his contempt towards his little brother Edmund (John Gallagher, Jr. a little too passive to make a lasting impression) sends ripples of disdain that crash against us more forcefully than the haunting waves on the distant shore conveyed by sound designer Clive Goodwin.
The major issue with this production is precisely that it allows each of the main actors to act in their own unique little world. When the four leads are onstage, it’s as if we’re watching four elaborate performances trapped within individual snow globes unaware that they should be affecting each other by mere proximity. It’s only the delightful Colby Minifie, as the maid Cathleen, who brings herself to the level of every actor she’s sharing a scene with; coy with Byrne and Shannon, equally admiring and condescending with Lange, a miniature masterwork of “scatting” with her partners.
If director Jonathan Kent’s intention was precisely to alienate each of the Tyrone family members as further apart as he could, in order to highlight their descent into personal narcissism, he forgot that there would eventually be an audience having to endure this disjointed exercise. Perhaps more fitting as a vintage peep show, than a well executed play, this Long Day’s Journey Into Night, sure makes one crave for the morrow.
