Eugene O'Neill is the only playwright to win a fourth Pulitzer Prize for Drama four times, and this is the play that won the fourth time, as well as the Tony Award for Best Play. It's also regarded by many critics as his greatest work, and one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century.
And it's quite good. On a personal level I very much appreciated that, coming in under 3 hours, it's much shorter than the last two plays of his that I watched.
I don't know that I'd call it one of the greatest American plays of the 20th century but as I'm becoming increasingly aware, individual mileage can vary greatly. And I have to factor in my reactions are specifically to the 1962 movie I watched. But the fact that it won both the Tony and the Pulitzer attests to a significant amount of critical appreciation .
A bit of background... O'Neill wrote this play in 1939 and continued to revise it until 1941. Because of its particularly auto-biographical self-revelatory, he didn't want it ever to be performed and didn't even want it published however he eventually supplied it to publishers in 1945 conditionally that it could not be published until 25 years after his death.
O'Neill died eight years later (1953) and shortly after his death his wife demanded that his publishers rescind those instructions and publish the play, which against their wishes they did. From first completing the play until publication represents a gap of 17 years, so it was a long play's journey into publication.
The journey
Another O'Neill play with a poetic title, the Long Day in question is the setting for the play. The whole thing happens over one day as a family of two sons along with their mother and father gather at a holiday home in Connecticut.
The premise is that, gathered together, the four are forced to confront their flaws, their unresolved interpersonal issues
For mine, the greatest strength of the play is the poetry of the language used by O'Neill, especially in the longish reflections and expositions. There are so many beautifully worded lines, and also some clever witty ones. One of my favourite lines from Edmund's father to him after being accused of being cheap and offering to send him to a cut-price sanatorium to treat his tuberculosis/consumption.
"You can go to any place you choose, never mind what it costs. Any place... I can afford. Any place... within reason."
Another thing that comes through strongly is the awkwardness of some usually-avoided painful and even devastating conversations. The play represents 24 hours of soul-searching and soul-bearing, touching on a number of taboos and family secrets and confessions, including drug use, failed career options, internal family blames and hostility and mental health (not specifically stated but seemingly intertwined with Mary's addiction). And I also quite liked the way O'Neill directed traffic, creating moments for characters in different combinations to have conversations specific to each relationship.
Aside from the length (again, better than some of O'Neill's marathons but still quite hefty) my biggest misgiving is the repetition of the number of times a character will express their extreme anger to another, then sort it out and apologise, only to then repeat the cycle again. It happens a lot. I think the intent is to show that families are repetitious and go through the same actions, and same conversations over and over again. And that's true. I just felt O'Neill continued beyond the point of having established that point.
There are some profound statements and engaging exchanges...Eugene's late night discussion with his father helps him understand his dad a lot better. My favourite conversations is the late night conversation between the brothers... a little less recrimination than some of the other scene couples and quite a bit of real connection and genuine sharing between to brothers who happened to to be best friends who "love each others guts," although even that features some mean mood swings.
Clearly one of the most praised playwrights of the 20th century needs no advice that I can offer, but if I was offering advice, this would have felt far stronger to me if (a) a lot of the dramatic moments were repeated with little addition to the play and (b) if it didn't lean so close to melodrama with the rapid emotional swings.
The versions I saw
I watched the 1962 film starring Katherine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. Obviously acting styles and direction have changed over the years, but even allowing for that I found this enjoyable... yet somewhat overacted. And not by the actors you'd possibly suspect.
I did like the camera work, sets and lighting a lot... closeups are used particularly well.
Ralph Richardson delivered a powerful version of James but I thought he added just a little too much sauce, especially in the most dramatic moments. Even allowing for the fact his character is meant to be an actor of modest ability with a love for Shakespeare, I thought his delivery at times was overly melodramatic and attemptedly Shakespearean beyond what was required.
Katherine Hepburn covers a wide range of emotions but the switch up between deliriously happy, to deeply sad or angry is whiplash fast and you could do yourself an injury trying to keep up. As with Ralph Richardson's performance, I'm sure she and the director interpreted the script that way and no doubt thought it might be an Oscar-winning performance (and it did earn her a nomination) but I felt she was cranked up to 11 to a distracting degree.
Jason Robards isn't someone who has ever struck me as having great range but I thought he was quite good in this and spot on for the character (although as with the others the mercurial swings take some absorbing), but for me the highlight was a very young Dean Stockwell. I probably first encountered him in "Quantum Leap" and later saw him in other works, but in a cast with far greater experience then he, I thought he stood out with a nuanced, emotional and touching portrayal.
Misgivings aside, this film is well worth a watch. The final scene is an exceptionally good piece of cinematography, all gathered in a room and realising they may have made no progress and be stuck exactly where they started, extreme closeups then pulled back away to indicate the discussions and arguments continue on.
The other version I saw I liked a lot more. It was the pro-shot video of the Apollo Theatre production of 2012 with Laurie Metcalf (from Roseanne and a whole lot of other things) and Poirot's David Suchet. The acting is uniformly stronger... less jerky emotional switches (even if the text remains the same) and the relationships between the characters come off more realistic. It felt, to coin the cliche, more real and more powerful as a result.
Final words
It's a good play, and deserves to be understood in context of how novel a narrative it was for its time, and how closely it reflected the life experience of its playwright.
I don't know if the lengthy gap (16 years) between this work and O'Neill's last published work "A Touch of the Poet," added to the prestige and nostalgia and fondness for the gifted playwright. More likely the critics and audiences of the time, and many since, just hold to a slightly different evaluation than me.
This could certainly be performed locally... in fact I could definitely seeing local performers wanting to do it and local audiences wanting to see it. My only real criticisms relate to length, repetition and the potential of overacting the quick emotional swings. I'm probably splitting hairs.
Well done, Mr O'Neill. Nicely written.
Materials Accessed:
- "Long Day's Journey into Night" - script (1939). There are several places you can access a free copy online. Here's one from the Internet Archive.
- "Long Day's Journey into Night" - movie (1962). Available to view for free on Youtube.
- "Long Day's Journey into Night" - pro-shot video (2012). Available for streaming by subscription on Digital Theatre.
- "Long Day's Journey into Night" - filmed play (2017). Available to view for free on Youtube.
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