Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Long Day's Journey into Night

2013; Penn State University Press; Volume: 34; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/eugeoneirevi.34.2.0269

2161-4318

Joseph Kane,

Cultural Studies and Interdisciplinary Research

A spirited Long Day's Journey Into Night culminated the Chicago's Eclipse Theatre Company's 2012 season, dedicated exclusively to Eugene O'Neill. In Eclipse's sensitive and faithful production, no single character is featured. Rather, each Tyrone is given the space to lash out, retreat, attack, evade, and endlessly circle each other in a maelstrom of recriminations, booze, and morphine. The family entity was the main character, and it was divisive yet indivisible. In a post-performance interview I conducted on December 2, 2012, director Nathaniel Swift said one major challenge was that the company's daily three-hour rehearsal schedule did not allow for a full run-through of the four-hour play. Mindful of the length and demanding nature of Long Day's Journey, Swift moved his characters through a rapid, though not hurried performance. He pointed out that for him, “a big issue was stamina, for the actors as well as the stamina we knew we were going to be asking of our audience. So it was important for me that things moved quickly, that the actors spoke overlapping each other's lines, and spoke with a really quick rhythm.” With this approach, he moderated to a degree the demands of O'Neill's lengthy drama.Indeed, the production was briskly paced without sacrificing significant moments for the audience to absorb the Tyrones' individual and collective heartache, which the cast delivered with the deftness and power of a graceful boxer. Patrick Blashill as James Tyrone and Joe McCauley as Jamie were well paired as father and son. Blashill was gruff, blustering, and unyielding, while McCauley's antagonistic physicality and callousness came to the fore. His wise-guy cynicism at times bordered on menace, markedly in the final act. His brotherly concern easily slipped into venomous contempt when he spit out, “Mama's baby, papa's pet!” In contrast to his father and brother, Stephen Dale as Edmund looked appropriately pale and sickly, in an oversized suit that emphasized his consumption. His lines were often delivered with a pleading cadence, struggling in vain against the weakness of his body and spirit. Comic respite was found in the performance of Jaimelyn Gray as Cathleen, the servant. For example, at the outset of act 3 it is clear she had been drinking and, as she enters, she feels her way along the wall to steady herself.If there was one standout in the Eclipse production, it was Susan Monts-Bologna as Mary Tyrone. The audience palpably felt the loss—of her happy life, of her former skill at the piano, of her religious faith, of all three of her sons. While wanting to condemn her addiction, Monts-Bologna allowed the audience to understand the anguish that kept her going back to it. Her hands were aflutter throughout the play, waving away anything too painful, stroking her husband's face, or hiding away suddenly when she became aware of them.During a talkback, Monts-Bologna said she wanted her portrayal not to evince a stereotypical drug addict but to invite a compassionate response in the audience. She pointed out that, at the time of the play, a doctor's prescription for morphine was not uncommon for any number of “female” maladies, mental or physical. Harsh judgment, she argued, should be tempered with sympathy. Indeed, her performance captured the naturalness and perhaps the inevitability of Mary's dilemma. Cast members also said it was revealing how all four Tyrones often were guilty of the same faults—like substance abuse, selfishness, and cruelty—that they accused the others of, as well as having many of the same positive qualities of periodic kindness and honest compassion.In a similar vein, director Swift described one of his favorite and most moving sections of the play was when James attempts to convince his wife not to go upstairs, where he knows she is going to take more of the “damned poison.” After she invites him to watch her, in order to allay his suspicions, and James insists that he is not her jailor, Mary responds, “No. I know you can't help but think it's a home.” Swift added, “I really love that line. It resonates with me because I think there's actually not a lot of animosity intended in it. It's just the simple truth. It's a bitter truth, and it really stands out for me as a very honest and simple moment.” Indeed, for all their combativeness, the interplay of this cast revealed that the Tyrones were more alike than different, and their enmity was never irretrievably far from a grudging affection. O'Neill wrote, in his early notes on the play, “the trouble is all love each other—so easy to leave if indifferent, or could just hate—but no, we have to love each other.” That compulsion, that unspoken edict, was evident throughout the Eclipse production. For all its turmoil and discord, this Tyrone family was indissolubly and perpetually bound.The set design by Kevin Hagen was particularly effective in helping to convey the narrative, displaying a world-weary hodgepodge of chintzy furnishings. The Tyrone summer home looked not only worn but worn out. The house seemed to sag. The dining table near the center of the stage had four mismatched chairs, subtly indicating that James had money for buying rounds at the tavern and for parcels of land, though not for fancy furniture or his son's best possible medical care. Lighting designer Chris Corwin employed old-fashioned footlights that added a washed-out effect to act 1, an atmospheric haze in act 3, and a ghostly pall in the final scene, as James rails against the light, Edmund yearns for the peace of the sea, and Mary evokes Mother Elizabeth and her lost happiness.Influenced by the Signature Theatre in New York, Eclipse Theatre's motto is “One playwright—one season,” and it is one of the very few theater companies in the Midwest to feature the works of an individual playwright for an entire season. Previous seasons have focused on such playwrights as Lanford Wilson, Jean Cocteau, Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, John Guare, and Tennessee Williams. Eclipse often chooses an intriguing trio of works representing the dramatist. Eclipse's twentieth anniversary, in 2012, also included Beyond the Horizon (March 15–April 22) and Ah, Wilderness! (July 26–September 2). Swift, who also serves as the Eclipse Company's artistic director, said that “O'Neill had definitely been on our short list for a long time. Part of the reason for selecting him this year is that, for our 20th year anniversary, we wanted someone of really high stature.” He added that, as Long Day's Journey is set in August 1912, O'Neill was chosen in part because 2012 marked the 100th anniversary of the tragedy of the Tyrone family. He said that since Long Day's Journey is such an iconic play, a drama that so many people come to with preconceived notions, he wanted to start with the “conscious mindset to approach it as though this was the first time anybody had ever produced it,” yet still maintain fidelity to the text. The challenge, he held, was to find the right combination, because Eclipse is “a dramaturgical-heavy theatre company, the O'Neill biographical information was so important for this production. Life with Monte Cristo, by Arthur and Barbara Gelb, was required reading for everybody this season. But at the same time, we asked ourselves, are we telling the story of the O'Neills or are we telling the story of the Tyrones? And we settled on wanting to tell the story of the Tyrones.”Indeed, the family was at the center of all three plays of Eclipse's season, with O'Neill's only comedy bookended by his first and last Pulitzer Prize–winning tragedies. Long Day's Journey Into Night is now nearing the sixtieth year since its first production and more than seventy years since its writing. The cast of the Eclipse production was heartened to report the number of younger people in their audiences, who still responded to the play, both viscerally and intellectually, indicating its continuing relevance and power. In the intimate space of Chicago's Athenaeum Theatre, the Eclipse Theatre Company made O'Neill's family ghosts come alive again.