Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill




I read Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill today. This is a play that I have seen and read many times. I even directed a scene once when I was in graduate school. I saw two productions on Broadway - one that had Jason Robards as Tyrone that was produced some time in the 1980's, and one in May of 2003 with Brian Denehy as Tyrone and Vanessa Redgrave as Mary.
This time I read it in preparation for the Modern Drama class that I am team teaching with Karl Tamburr. I have been thinking a great deal about the different peformances I have seen, because Robards was such a commanding presence that it seemed that the others were stunted in his shadow, but the one that I saw this May made the opposite choice, Mary was the commanding presence that stunted the others in the family.
As part of the class, I showed portions of two other performers - the film by Sidney Lumet with Ralph Richardson as Tyrone and Katherine Hepburn as Mary, and a version aired on Great Performances with I think William Hutt and Margaret Henderson. The approaches were very different; in the film Tyrone is played as a bit of a ham actor, making his claim that he could have been great a bit pitiful - he doesn't know he is not that good. Mary is more overtly losing her mind, and everything she says carries a hostile bite to it. The great performance in the film is Robards as Jamie who is charming as well as cynical, and when he finds out Mary has turned to drugs again the look on his face is priceless - he is stricken with grief.
Henderson goes the other way with Mary - sometimes her teasing is hostile, but sometimes it is loving and sometimes it hostility disguised as loving.

Posted: Sun - February 15, 2004 at 08:21 PM          

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