When it was announced that Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel would be starring as James and Mary Tyrone in a new Off-Broadway revival of Eugene O’Neill’s landmark play Long Day’s Journey into Night, it was exciting news. The couple, who are married in real life, have become two of our foremost character actors, consistently distinguishing themselves on stage, screen and television. Their profiles have only risen in recent years, thanks to their recurring roles in such acclaimed series as The Queen’s Gambit and Homeland respectively.
Having now seen the production, I can only say that I’m still looking forward to someday seeing Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel in Long Day’s Journey into Night.
That’s because this rendition — being presented by Audible, which will release an audio version at a later date — isn’t so much O’Neill’s Long Day Journey as it is that of director Robert O’Hara (Slave Play). O’Hara, apparently deciding that this 20th century masterwork which posthumously won both the Tony and Pulitzer Prize isn’t quite up to snuff, has very much made it his own.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
To that end, the play has been updated from its original 1912 setting to the present day and has had its running time cut nearly in half, resulting in a streamlined, intermissionless 110 minutes that somehow manages to feel longer than the original. The production has also excised one of the characters, the maid Cathleen, which no doubt accounts for the ramshackle set design, strewn with Fed Ex boxes, being such an unholy mess.
To clue you immediately that this will not be your typical O’Neill, the audience is greeted with a large monitor projecting a CNN news broadcast about the Trump/Biden 2020 presidential contest. As if we haven’t suffered enough just living through it once.
Speaking of suffering, Covid also rears its ugly head in the production. At one point, when the tubercular Edmund (Ato Blankson-Wood, Slave Play) launches into uncontrollable hacking, a horrified James leaps away and shouts “Don’t cough!” which prompts his chastened son to immediately don a surgical mask.
Camp’s James Tyrone, who is supposed to be a former stage matinee idol, instead comes across like an unemployed sitcom actor, wearing shorts and sandals and serenading Mary on guitar with “Till There Was You.” It was hard to decide whether to be more offended on behalf of The Music Man or The Beatles.
This is a production for those who think Long Day’s Journey is normally just too damn subtle. Marvel’s morphine-addicted Mary frequently retreats to an upper level of the stage, where she’s seen shooting up as psychedelic projections make you think you’re at a Grateful Dead concert. In her climactic, drugged-out appearance, you expect to see a needle dangling from her arm and hear “White Rabbit” blaring on the sound system.
You’d think that a play as sturdy as this would survive the desecration, but alas the production succeeds all too well in convincing you that perhaps this O’Neill guy was seriously overrated. After all, he was too embarrassed to have it published or produced during his lifetime.
Whatever one thinks of the play (and believe me, I have no objections to some judicious editing), it deserves better than this. The autobiographical specificity of the characters and situations, upon which it depends so heavily for its impact, is utterly lost here. In the context in which it’s being presented, much of the dialogue sounds nonsensical; it’s no wonder that O’Hara felt the need to cut so much of it.
Superb thespians that they are, Camp and Marvel at least frequently provide hints of the great performances they would have been capable of giving under more favorable circumstances. It’s thus all the more heartbreaking that they’re not allowed to do so. And while Blankson-Wood and Bowen, the latter playing the licentious James Tyrone Jr., have their moments, they fail to invest their characterizations with sufficient nuance.
Throughout the evening, there are frequent projections informing us of the time of day, until the end, when the word “Night” appears. Just in case you hadn’t already figured out that the long day’s journey was thankfully over.
