The experience and characteristics of addiction seem like a very modern scourge, the result of a newly pressured, fast-paced, status-driven society that encourages people to ‘have it all’, the perfect job, the perfect family and a fabulous Instagram-able social life. For some, keeping up means having to rely on artificial stimulants, particularly alcohol and caffeine which have become not just essential but entirely normalised; addiction is no longer an exceptional refuge for the broken few but a basic state of being for a whole generation working longer hours and living in the ever-present Social Media glare.
Popular culture started to explore different kinds of addiction long ago; Danny Boyle and Steve McQueen have filmed it, Amy Winehouse sang about it and most recently the National Theatre put it on stage as the acclaimed People, Places and Things, but this interest is far from a recent phenomenon; examining addiction is not really that new at all, and many playwrights have grappled with the causes and effects of addictive behaviour on the user and those around them. While Noel Coward penned a shocking mother-son drama about drug abuse as early as the 1920s (The Vortex), Eugene O’Neill set his 1941 semi-autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1912, where arguably the multiple addictive behaviour he examines were even more taboo.
This rather hefty play is set at a crucial time of change in the early twentieth-century when nineteenth-century formalities were being shrugged off and Western societies began to move towards an urban-based, mechanised future catalysed by international warfare. But O’Neill was also writing at the time of America’s entry into the Second World War, making subtle contemporary statements about the final lull before the storm, knowing something big and familiar is approaching which the characters hoped could be avoided.
Like Terence Rattigan’s After the Dance, there is also an examination of the long-term effect of a transient lifestyle, of on-going drug and alcohol dependence. Substitute James and Mary Tyrone for the Bright Young Things of the 1920s or prohibition era America – contemporaries of O’Neill – both are now dealing with the consequences of their younger lifestyle, the attraction of the big city and the lasting damage to mind and character that their excesses created. The scene title may be 1912 but O’Neil had plenty to say about the times he lived in.
The Bristol Old Vic’s production starring Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville transfers to the West End for a limited run at the Wyndhams, and its clear that these wider themes are as much part of Richard Eyre’s surefooted interpretation as the fairly straightforward story of a disillusioned family coming to terms with the cycle of relapse and rehab. At the Tyrone summer home, Mary is newly returned to her husband and grown-up sons after spending some time restoring her health. James Tyrone, a well-regarded stage actor in New York, is delighted to see his wife so healthy but endures a prickly relationship with sons Jamie and Edmund. During the course of one long day, Mary’s behaviour becomes increasingly frantic and as familiar patterns of behaviour emerge, blame, recrimination and regret are never far from the surface.
Everyone in Richard Eyre’s production has sold their soul to something that they think will save them from the difficulties of their lives, and they find solace in some form of addiction. The cause of Mary’s nervy behaviour and swinging moods is only slowly revealed as the play unfolds and, for first time viewers, many alternative possibilities suggest themselves before the truth is revealed. For the men around her though, their dependence on alcohol, even with a bout of tuberculosis, is as vital to them as breathing (probably not one to attempt a drink along).
Actor James pontificates frequently, enjoying the status that fame has brought him and goading his sons for their lack of independence – a state he presumably has caused through his parenting. And here Jeremy Irons makes use of his stature to offer a gruff but polished creation, entranced by the sound of his own voice and blind to the effect his behaviour has on those around him. He may not quite be the tough figure of Irish descent the text suggests, but, still handsome and imposing, Irons captures a crucial aspect of James’s character making his still fervent love for Mary appear between the cracks, his devotion to her a clear explanation of why he continues to hope the woman he first met can return to him.
In many ways, it’s James who is the most tragic character, and as we later discover the reputation he clings to, the presentation of himself as an erudite leading man is less assured than we supposed, that he sold-out his early promise for a guaranteed income, a choice many actors must make. So, Irons shows us that James’s brusque treatment of his sons and his frequently mocked stinginess, is rather more defensive than offensive, designed to create the illusion of power and influence in the one place he thinks he can have full command. The frequent whiskies are used to prevent those truths becoming too vocal in his mind.
Mary is a much harder character to chart and the always quietly brilliant Lesley Manville is spectacular in showing both why Mary’s unpredictability would be frustrating to live with, while extracting incredible pathos for a woman desperate to seek shelter from what has been a lifetime of disappointment and emotional devastation. Seeing the newly Oscar-nominated actor on stage is always a joy as Manville brings so many layers to whatever part she plays, spinning from comedy to pain, happiness and despair so effortlessly that a role as complex as Mary is perfectly suited to her considerable skills.
And that is something Manville must do repeatedly as the vigour and contentment of Mary’s morning mood gives way to a highly-strung nervousness which Manville slowly introduces into the performance. As the day wears on, the extremes of behaviour become more pronounced, vacillating convincingly between minor fusses about her to hair to full-blown self-pity, effusive worrying and bitter diatribes about her husband as her addiction regains its hold over her. Her repeated references to a lost child, to her friendlessness, the loneliness that comes from a life moving between hotels for James’s work, not having a home, a place to properly root herself unveil the circularity of her thought, loosening her grip on reality. Manville’s skill here is in showing that Mary both fears and embraces the addiction that she cannot shake, that in this particular environment, which she loathes, her dependency saves her from it, while retaining a hint of the alluring beauty she once was as her past revisits her.
Sons Jamie and Edmund are not entirely eclipsed by their parents and Rory Keenan offers a meaningful performance as Jamie, the eldest son who proves a constant disappointment with his drinking and womanising. Following his father into acting, Keenan’s Jamie is a lost soul, seeking pleasure where he can as a solace from the pain of his mother’s compulsion. Matthew Beard’s Edmund is a calmer presence, having to face a potentially fatal diagnosis of his own while carrying the burden of being the literary son with most potential. All of the men in the play, father and sons, clearly demonstrate the crushing devastation of having their hopes destroyed which is the catalyst for the hours of family revelation that follow.
The Tyrone’s summer house is beautifully conceived by designer Rob Howell as a prison of reflective surfaces with the interior and exterior in constant battle. Reflecting all of the characters’ inner confliction, the predominantly glass structure repeatedly reflects their own image back at them, while offering them a hint of the freedom outside that they will never enjoy. Howell allows elements of that outside world to burst into the house with swirls of Van Gogh-like paint that curls around the back corner of the room and the stairs, leading to the backlit skyscape outside, created by Peter Mumford, as changing slashes of colour dampen the sunrise as fog envelops the house once again. That idea of light into dark is equally reflected in Howell’s costume design as the pale linens of daytime dress give way to funereal black as events formalise.
At three and a half hours this is a very lengthy play, and while Eyre directs with light and pace in the first half (about an hour and twenty minutes), the final protracted section is a marathon for an audience, especially once it becomes clear that each character will get their final turn in the spotlight before its conclusion. Like Annie Baker’s new play John, also clocking in at well over three hours, there is something magnetic about each conversation in Long Day’s Journey into Night which keeps you engaged, but there are momentary lulls in between where the energy sags that are harder to navigate, and you may fade out a little before being hooked into the next discussion.
The Bristol Old Vic’s production is lovingly created, wringing excellent performances from its leads and bringing clarity to O’Neill’s huge canvas. It’s not an easy watch, and it may be quite some time before you want to see another version of this play, but this high-quality production emphasises the relevance of O’Neill’s most personal story. What his work demonstrates is whatever popular culture may tell us now, addictive behaviours are neither new nor confined to a particular class. Loneliness, fear and powerlessness can affect anyone, and however perfect their life may seem on the outside, for addicts and their families O’Neill wants us to know there will be plenty of long days and nights to suffer.
Long Day’s Journey into Night is at the Wyndham’s Theatre until 7 April. Tickets start at £12.50. Follow this blog on Twitter @culturalcap1
Cultural Capital 
February 26th, 2018 at 10:52 pm
Hi Maryam
Excellent comments, as usual. I don’t even disagree with you much on this one! The running time of this production was another indicator – not that any more were needed given the cast – that it was unmissable. The Laurie Metcalf/David Suchet effort a few years back might have been very good if they hadn’t, apparently, made a priority of bringing it in in under three hours and rattled off the lines with unseemly haste. It’s a play that needs to be long and even if it does seem to drag at times that can even be a virtue in itself. While there could be no excuse for gratuitous padding, it does no harm to give the audience a taste of the sheer tedium involved in living with addiction. After all, the feeling of ‘oh, no; not this again’ is as much a feature of the play’s atmosphere as the enveloping fog. Meanwhile the play itself, written just a few years after the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous – and referring back to three decades earlier – is a useful reminder that the human capacity for self-destruction is way beyond anything the burgeoning self-help and psychobabble industry can easily address. And, as you say, with major war – now, as in 1941 America – seriously threatening, that capacity for self destruction threatens worse than mere substance abuse.
I’d never seen Jeremy Irons on stage before and I was impressed. His James Tyrone was rather lighter on the character’s pomposity than Suchet’s and that made him at once more sympathetic and more tragic. I wasn’t sure about giving him an accent that was barely American at all – to me he sounded genteel Irish going into English – but it wasn’t a big problem. Lesley Manville I’ve seen twice before – Grief and Ghosts – and was hugely confident of a fine performance. I wasn’t disappointed and honestly couldn’t name an actor, male or female, that I’ve seen who is her equal. She inhabits roles so perfectly that you get the impression with every role she plays that she’s been playing the character all her life. The two sons were also very fine. I’d seen Rory Keenan several times before, most recently in Philadelphia, Here I Come! which is not, for me, one of Brian Friel’s better plays. Better, in my opinion, was his stint as Ruairi in Richard Bean’s The Big Fellah (a play that could do with a revival but, in the current politically sensitive climate, probably won’t get one) and it was good to see Keenan in a real classic role. Matthew Beard was quietly impressive in Skylight a while ago and his Edmund here was commendably unsentimental. Jessica Regan was fine as Cathleen, too though, as with James senior, I didn’t particularly take to the accent which, in Cathleen’s case, had just a bit too much of the Blarney stone about it.
We’ve had some good American plays recently. If Long Day’s Journey into Night sells well despite its uncompromising length dare I hope for a major production of Mourning Becomes Electra in the near future?
February 27th, 2018 at 10:10 am
Hi John, we almost agree, that could be a first! This is undoubtedly a very fine production and probably one of the most memorable.
Length isn’t a problem if it has purpose (as it does here) and if the show has plenty to say which is certainly true of O’Neill’s work in general. Too often long plays are just a vanity because the performers or directors want to include many ideas and don’t think about the audience’s perspective. But for anyone who hadn’t seen Long Day’s Journey before I wanted to alert them to the length because you do need to prepare for a long-haul show, and, practically, to think about getting home afterwards!
I entirely agree about Irons and was pleased to see his performance had developed considerably since the weak reviews for the Bristol run. He brought a new dimension to the role and a sympathy for James which showed his own struggle within the marriage really nicely.
Manville is an astonishing performer, not least in Ghosts. To be so marvellous in this complex role at the same time as playing two quite different characters in her Oscar nominated film role and the BBC sitcom ‘Mum’ is proof of her range and talent. Its wonderful to see her finally enjoying wider recognition.