Long Day’s Journey Into Night

As audience members shuffled past each other in masks and took their seats at the Minetta Lane Theatre New York City’s West Village during short, frigid days of early 2022, an on-stage monitor playing CNN placed us foment summer 2020. The glowed with footage former president refusing to condemn white teen shooter Kyle Rittenhouse. Before was living room Tyrones’ home, strewn Amazon boxes clutter, hand sanitizer prominently set on coffee table. A yoga mat shared space furniture. Without sound, these images provided some many visual signals that this production Long Day’s Journey Into Night, famous for its insistence looking back, would be taking audiences a shorter temporal journey. Instead decades, play recent sorrow glance back about year half.If Clint Ramos’s design weren’t enough immerse pandemiccore, his costume put characters frumpy casual aesthetic our time. Magnetic stage screen actor Elizabeth Marvel entered as Mary Tyrone black leggings gray hoodie, straight out yogurt commercial. She toted giant smoothie pink straw settled into impressive downstage downward dogs were perhaps contemporary interpretation Mary’s “young, graceful figure, trifle plump, but showing little evidence middle-aged waist hips.” At first, O’Neill’s dialogue seemed layer seamlessly onto new context. After all, opens James (Bill Camp) commenting wife’s weight (“You’re fine armful now, Mary, those twenty pounds you gained”). wry chuckle went through crowd. materially comfortable older couple bickered Tyrone’s poor real estate investments suspicion “Wall Street swindlers,” it easy even pleasurable appreciate fresh resonances depicting day 1912, written 1941, first performed 1956.Director Robert O’Hara received Tony nomination directing Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play is also celebrated playwright. Williamstown Festival’s Tennessee Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire Audra McDonald Blanche canceled due pandemic 2020, directed audio production. Produced distributed by Audible Inc. (owned Amazon), project Audible’s producing staging part transformative Theater endeavor, which funds live productions then releases companion performances. Indeed, 100-minute performance now available stream alongside dozens works. Hence, Night site significant innovation US theater production, distribution, consumption. mentored prolific playwright director George C. Wolfe recently told American “being Black queer body” meant he knew could never “make everybody happy” has, therefore, made goal. Danai Gurira Richard III Shakespeare Park’s 2022 season. Therefore, can within context O’Hara’s growing engagement with, disruption of, traditional canon, well relation Wolfe’s 2018 Broadway Iceman Cometh, cut text cast Denzel Washington Hickey. However, contrast splashy revival, decidedly intimate without screen-celebrity casting.O’Hara three interventions. Not only did make setting contemporary, truncated script half, parents actors sons (fig. 1). Together, choices created shifting meanings materialized dissipated based not casting actors’ interpretations characters, members’ points reference.To member unfamiliar plot, might have initially like self-absorbed who had unthinkingly adopted two children struggling support men racist society. When played reporting Kenosha, Wisconsin police shooting Jacob Blake, pointed critique trying “survive gaze,” Rebecca Carroll terms it. adoption scenario disappeared delved her guilt over baby died difficult birth Edmund 1).For Camp are married life, James’s affectionate combustive scenes seem acting exercises or risky breach boundaries. Sometimes we see Brechtian “both/and” formulation—or neither/nor quite themselves fully version James, Jamie (Jason Bowen), (Ato Blankson-Wood). Experiments compression came together cutting Cathleen maid (or “second girl”) from script. This family, particularly more isolated, no surrogate witnessing dissolution. Along cuts, Cathleen’s absence muted original Irishness play, transforming Tyrones unhappy family cloistered own past, specter Old Sod.O’Hara’s edited events less haunted pressured. covers sixteen hours and, tends run four, creating 4:1 time representation ratio. Cutting bit than further compressed 8:1 intermissions, followed relentlessly sunny foggy night. Digital red stamps correlated directions helped track day, while helping rest understand when moving act. dramaturgy allowed comment simultaneously individual general state United States. demanded “for God’s sake, forget past!,” retained personal intensity one family’s turmoil. iconic response, “the present, isn’t it? It’s future, too,” launched harrowing description neediness, Jamie’s dangerous jealousy, Eugene’s death, augered States’s continuing entrenchment cycle racial violence public health failure.Given nation’s opioid crisis, morphine addiction mapped readily current desperations. under constant surveillance because they fear relapse retreat “detachment”—an adjective O’Neill uses thirty times directions. detach gave access suggests. An upstage staircase led second-floor window left wall. It revealed wallpapered nook tiny desk: infamous spare relapse. use vertical alleviated stagnancy room, private realm deepened squeamish voyeurism addiction. witnessed tying off vein, up, nodding out. Watching deprived privacy, implicating character’s surveillance. dramatic irony decreased audience’s ability check temperaments aligning ourselves cynical—and accurate—assumption has relapsed Edmund’s self-protective hope codependent naivete. Projection designer Yee Eun Nam brightly colored morphing shapes exteriorized internal changes. point, projected skeleton stairs. These both concretized abstracted physiological alteration, something viewers traditionally staged ascertain via entrances after long absences.“Whose it?” asks cards bleary whiskey fog around midnight. great deal career laments resentments literary taste patriarch raging narcissist frustrated drunk OCD cheapskate. Camp’s felt unsatisfyingly muted, me wonder if I addicted thinking magnetic bombast. Act 4’s man-to-man between Blankson-Wood channeled electricity. 2020 work arc because, ultimately, COVID replacement tuberculosis affects mask dangled Blankson-Wood’s wrist worn mouth briefly, way suggested true contagion. conversations cheap doctors reasonable enough, demand “stop coughing” became most hostile moments Nevertheless, act masculine bender picked up compelling tension Bowen deliriously miserable, postcoital Jamie.Long occupies strange place mid-twentieth-century canon. Written before Glass Menagerie, Desire, Death Salesman, yet premiering them, joins plays grappling masculinity’s insecurities compensations. While brothel too anachronistic, Bowen’s remarkably calibrated convincingly depicted brother oscillating vindictiveness protectiveness. Although case 2’s scene Blankson-Wood, confrontation potentially evoked Link Booth Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog. That is, just Marvel’s whiteness heightened younger Tyrones, final two-hander scene, read brothers locked familiar arguments sex, money, 2). much didn’t treat preciously, moment reify canonicity, forged potential link pathbreaking Pulitzer Prize–winning playwrights: Parks.While doesn’t know what forlorn sexual energies, haze accesses regret awakening Catholic high school senior meeting professional eleven years elder. monologue plaintive denouement male combative 4 confrontations, end climax reverie. descended stairs culminating ecstasy reminiscent Molly Bloom finishing Ulysses. Her underscored centrality seems fitting, since small-scale off-Broadway developed interest play. Crossing meticulous vulnerability, ghost haunting sporadic exits. absolute nucleus nuclear family. everyone house feel alone her.