None of us can help the things life has done to us
The latest in an occasional series of theatre reviews...
Long Day's Journey Into Night : Wyndham's Theatre
Having said in my last post that I'm mostly neutral to star casting, this was a most definite exception to that - Brian Cox had just come to the end of his run in Succession when I saw this advertised and I reckoned he'd be worth seeing on stage and the addition of Patricia Clarkson was a bonus, although I couldn't tell you what I knew her from - IMDB reminds me of The Station Agent, Sharp Objects and Easy A (where she and Stanley Tucci have an absolute blast). So I then only had to wait a year after paying for the tickets to head into London to see whether they'd do a good job...
I didn't know anything about the play other than it was by Eugene O'Neill who's one of the more celebrated US playwrights from "some time ago" (Wikipedia will give you the details if you really need them, but you can be certain I didn't have the faintest idea until I looked it up). But I was expecting something pretty literary and grim - and I think it's fair to say I was on the right lines. Like my extensive experience of Tennessee Williams plays (hey, I've seen three now), it's one of those plays where everything immediately gives the impression of being slightly rocky - but things soon turn out to be so much worse than that.
Brian Cox plays James Tyrone, the head of the family (who is not a million miles away from one Kendall Roy in a lot of ways) and Patricia Clarkson plays his wife Mary and whilst initially things seem a bit off between them, it doesn't take long for things to head downhill dramatically. They have two sons - Jamie (Daryl McCormack - recently seen in Bad Sisters) and Edmund (Laurie Kynaston) who seem to get on well enough but you know that's not going to last either. Completing this huge cast is Cathleen (Louise Harland - Orla from Derry Girls, who I didn't recognise at all), the family's maid who is remarkable only in that she doesn't have any guilt or secrets that she wishes to discuss at length.
And when I say at length - boy, do I mean it! The first half was a fairly standard 75 minutes, but the second half weighed in at an impressive 105 minutes - Eugene wasn't mucking about with this play. A lot of it takes the form of two handers between various members of the family as they discuss their guilt, trauma and secrets - reminiscing and admitting to many past indiscretions. There were also a lot of unpleasant truths handed out, almost immediate followed up by assurances that they weren't meant in that way or that they were only doing it for the best.
Although it's rare that a character is on the stage alone, a lot of the dialogue takes the form of monologues - there's a LOT of lines for all the family roles to perform. James and Jamie are actors and Edmund is a poet so things are also very literary, with Shakespeare and various poets quoted liberally throughout the play, which doesn't exactly make it the most conversational of dialogue. Cathleen is the exception - she is very much the "normal" outsider of the group and pretty underused except for the beginning of the second half where she has a chunky scene with Mary, which acts as (relatively) light relief within the context of the play.
But everyone else has a lot of acting to do and they certainly do it well - Brian and Daryl were the pick of the bunch for me, but no-one can be faulted and I can't begin to imagine how much work they must have had to put in to get it to this level. Having seen both Brian and Sarah Snook on stage this year, I'm now going to make it my mission to catch as many other people from Succession on stage - Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen have all got to be good at that sort of thing, haven't they?
The set is surprisingly sparse and static - a table and chairs, a side table for the whisky (which is heavily used), a piano and a few other items dotted around is all there is and they don't move for the entire play. It's well designed and lit though and it is very atmospheric at times.
So it's well acted and nice to look at, but the length did make it more of a challenge than I felt the need for. Wikipedia tells me it's viewed as one of the great American plays of the 20th century so I guess removing sections is frowned upon - it also tells me that previous productions have attracted some pretty heavyweight actors. James has been played by Laurence Olivier, Jack Lemmon, Timothy West, Charles Dance, Brian Dennehy, William Hurt, David Suchet, Gabriel Byrne, Alfred Molina and Jeremy Irons, Mary has been played by Prunella Scales (opposite Timothy West, her husband), Jessica Lange (opposite both Charles Dance and Gabriel Byrne), Vanessa Redgrave, Liv Ullmann, Laurie Metcalf and Lesley Manville and Jamie has been taken on by Kevin Spacey, Paul Rudd, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Shannon - which is a pretty impressive list of names!
So I'm glad I ticked it off the list, but it was a bit too "theatrical" for me and definitely too "long", so it's nothing something I'll be rushing back to - and I suspect I'm by no means on my own there. I always enjoy listening in to the various conversations going on around me as I leave the theatre and last night delivered some absolute beauties
"Do you think it was meant to be that long?"
"How many times did you fall asleep?"
"I woke up and he was on stage!"
"That was sooo depressing"
"Believe it or not, that’s his funniest play"
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