Long Day's Journey Into Night

Having once played Edmund Tyrone myself in summer stock back in 1976, and coming from an Irish-American family, I tend to be a tough critic of productions of this play. For my money, however, this is the most nuanced, well-acted production of LDJIN available. Lemmon perfectly embodies the combination of grandiosity and pettiness that comprise James Tyrone, Sr. Peter Gallagher is a finely poetic Edmund, and Kevin Spacey's Jamie is the most scalding portrait of self-loathing I have ever seen.

The linchpin of the story, for being everybody's scapegoat, is of course Mary Tyrone, and Bethel Leslie's performance is the bedrock and great surprise of this production. Her Mary is less affected and more internal than that of the lacier Katharine Hepburn, who to me always seemed to have one eye on the camera. Having grown up with a real M.T. in my own extended family, I can state from experience that Miss Leslie's "fogbound" portrayal is vastly more authentic, and, to me at least, the more heartbreaking for it.

A superb production all around.

Yes, it's almost 3 hours long. Yes, it's just 4 chemically altered characters alternating between yelling at each other and doing pages-long soliloquies. Yes, they never leave the single set. And you know what? It's amazing. This is literally master class in acting. Eugene O'Neill is a tough slog, but it was totally worth it to see these 4 inhabit the roles. I've forgotten how good an actor Peter Gallagher is and it's no small feat holding your own against Jack Lemmon. Don't try to compare it to the 1962 Katharine Hepburn film version... this one is like going to the theater, without having to leave your couch.

This production is worth viewing for Bethel Leslie. I really dislike director Jonathan Miller's domestication of the Tyrones. I understand what he was after... and he did succeed; but for me this play shouldn't be brought down to earth. It's not a television "dramedy." When I saw this production live, I overheard one audience member at intermission jocularly tell her companion, "They're just like my family!" And at the play's climax (Mary Tyrone's descent down the staircase) when Jamie (Kevin Spacey) uttered his line, "The mad scene: enter Ophelia" the audience roared with laughter. To me, that's a little like urging an audience to laugh when Lear brings in the lifeless body of his youngest daughter Cordelia.

Jack Lemmon was a fine actor, but he always brought himself to the roles he played and in this case it was hard for me to forget that he was not Ens. Pulver, C.C. Baxter or Felix Unger. I did like Peter Gallagher as Edmund, but not Kevin Spacey's take on Jamie (oddly after being unimpressed with Spacey in this and THE ICEMAN COMETH, I *loved* his interpretation of Jim Tyrone in his revival of A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN... essentially an older version of the same role he plays here).

But then there's Bethel Leslie who makes this whole production worthwhile. I won't say she's the best Mary Tyrone I've ever seen, but only because saying so really makes no sense since many great actresses have played this role in many different ways. She is a less sympathetic Mary than usual -- that the character is an emotional vampire has never been more evident -- but it's a valid interpretation and a very disturbing one.

I know some fans of the play love this production, so I actually urge people to see it and decide for themselves. I think this is a well executed production of a flawed interpretation of the play.

Although the camerawork and credits are almost painfully simple, the play itself and the acting make it an amazing experience. At almost 3 hours long, it at first seems a bit daunting, but when the final line is spoken, you can't help but feel cheated out of just a little bit more. I had to see this because I had just seen Kevin Spacey on Broadway in the Iceman Cometh, and, though that was the more powerful experience, I remain sure that this production was as close to perfect as it could be, considering it was not seen live. That it is not live is a problem, because there are moments that clearly expect an audience reaction, but having a live audience videotaped would have detracted greatly, so I am completely satisfied with this method. All of the actors, with the possible exception of Cathleen, who is by far the most minor character with the least screen time, were perfect, and I would take the time to say my favorites, except that that would comprise of listing every actor in the play/movie. The direction starts off somewhat irritating and looks clearly made-for-TV, but by a few minutes into it, this seems completely irrelevant. The introductory credits are white typed on black with absolutely no sound, which is slightly disconcerting considering there are no previews or anything before the start of the play to hint ahead of time, but during the end credits, the magic of this silence is greatly appreciated. An extremely simple production, with only the one set used on stage, this was infinitely more satisfying and powerful than I ever would have imagined from my video rental guy's comment that I must want to torture myself by watching it all in one night. Looking back, I can't imagine a place where I would have been willing to pause it even long enough to answer the phone. I give it a ten out of ten.

The difference between this production of Long Day's Journey Into Night and the 1962 version is the difference between a filmed stage play and a movie. The 1962 film was an incredible work, one of the best adapted stage plays to film ever.

One big part of the play is the obsession of James Tyrone into making a grand estate as would befit a celebrated matinée idol of the stage. With the action taking place in the Tyrone living room in the play you have to depend on the players to envision this edifice that Tyrone is trying to create. In the 1962 film the dialog moves in and out and around the grounds of the estate and the film was shot in a mansion that still stands on the Connecticut ocean shore and is an attraction today. The house becomes a character unto itself and therefore the 1962 film has dimensions that cannot be realized here.

Playing the wildly dysfunctional Tyrone family is Jack Lemmon and Bethel Leslie and their sons, Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher. O'Neill takes us back to a moment in time in 1912 as his alter ego Peter Gallagher is sick with tuberculosis, but knowing he has a gift to give the world and worrying whether he will live long enough to give it. It's through his eyes we see the events unfold.

O'Neill plays are long and deep on characterization if short on action. But the characters linger with you forever. Jack Lemmon is the patriarch, a former matinée idol as O'Neill's father was, grown famous for playing a pulp version of The Count Of Monte Cristo a gazillion times. Like someone in a long running television series, he became a victim of typecasting and the public wouldn't see him in anything else. But the role made him prosperous, but intellectually stifled.

Watching Lemmon he must have studied Ralph Richardson's 1962 performance so much that pieces of Richardson kept creeping into his mouth. At times he was almost imitating him. Still Jack Lemmon is a good enough actor to create his own Tyrone.

That will not be said about Bethel Leslie whose health is everyone's concern and what the family revolves around. She doesn't sound the least like Katharine Hepburn. During the difficult birth of her second son who grew up to be Peter Gallagher, she was prescribed narcotics for the pain and grew to like it too much. As she married well, her addiction kept her from being a police problem or a dreg on whatever meager social services existed in 1912. It's not clear what started her on this, but my guess would be laudanum, an opium derivative and prescribed by a lot of quack doctors and even some good ones who didn't know at the time what the long term effects were. Leslie is as riveting as Katharine Hepburn was.

Ditto for Kevin Spacey who stepped into the giant shoes of Jason Robards who was considered to be the premier interpreter of the works of Eugene O'Neill in his time. The older son carried the father's hopes and dreams of succeeding him as a stage actor of renown, but his love of the nightlife of Broadway overtook him. That final drunken scene with his father and brother where he just totally loses it is Spacey reaching incredible dimensions.

Gallagher takes it all in and he will survive despite a father who won't send him to a proper sanitarium for a cure because he's cheap, despite a mother who clings to him, despite a brother who can't reconcile love, hate, and jealousy that he has all at the same time. He did survive and gave us some of the best work in American literature.

And this is a fine production of one of the best works of American literature.