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Regional Reviews: St. Louis Long Day's Journey Into Night Also see Richard's reviews of Clyde's and The Curious Savage
But "art has truth, take refuge there," as the poet and critic Matthew Arnold once wrote.* And the whole philosophy of what we now believe about modern theatre, the invisible truth and constitution of it, still burns bright on every page of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Austin Pendleton directs a stunning production of the three-hour play (with one 15-minute intermission) at the St. Louis Actors' Studio. And I'll probably go stand in line and see it all over again before it closes February 23rd. I was awestruck the first time. And unsettled, in a wonderful way. The autobiographical play debuted in February of 1956 at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, a little over two years after the playwright's death. O'Neill (who also wrote The Iceman Cometh and The Hairy Ape, among others) said he began writing this memory piece in the late 1930s. But the first staging on Broadway didn't come until in the 1956-57 season, becoming his fourth Pulitzer Prize win, and winning the Tony Award for best drama as well. (He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1936.) The tone of this new production is often gentle, but clipped and matter-of-fact–until we hit a metaphorical patch of emotional ice and go sliding into brilliant human chaos. St. Louis Actors' Studio founder William Roth plays the stand-in for O'Neill's own father, here the former matinee idol James Tyrone who becomes a stalking horse for his own two sons, Jamie and Edmund, played by Joel Moses and Dustin Petrillo. Meghan Baker, as their mother, Mary Tyrone, gradually surrenders to morphine addiction in the play, in a steady decline that's cruel by angstroms, like delicate crystals from a chandelier hitting the floor one by one. Each of the Tyrones develops a horrible obsession, from harmless desire or terrible necessity. It's how we realize that Hell must be a very simple place indeed. A foggy night in New England blurs the past and present. Memory falls victim to personality. And Irish Catholic mercy falls victim to Irish Catholic everything else. You can go very deep into a great play like this, as they do here. And the swirl of who these characters are, and what they want, swallows them all like quicksand. Whether it's money or alcohol or morphine, addiction is a happiness that gets farther and farther away. The whole show seems to exist as a pushed-aside memory, seen across a void in the long, narrow Gaslight Theater. Old arguments are revived again and again. But the whole thing is consistently elegant in word and deed, ferociously so near the end. Indelible stage moments include Mr. Roth and Mr. Petrillo quietly exchanging old dreams and regrets: the father speaking of the trade-off between art and security; and Edmund recalling his youth out on the majestic sea (in that passage, a ceiling light swims overhead from a chain like a square-rigger's oil lamp). Not long after that strange peaceful moment, Edmund and Jamie talk late into the night, toward the kind of horrifying realizations that can only come from strange folded-up dimensions within the mind. A black wall at stage-left becomes director Pendleton's canvas. And as the brothers flicker back and forth against it, they seem bathed in a migraine's cynical blaze, in a brutal montage. It's far beyond tragedy, and thrilling in its reckless wisdom. Coming and going, Bridgette Bassa is every bit as smooth and dimensional playing Cathleen, the chatty maid. The meticulous costumes are by Teresa Doggett, as ornate as any cherished memory. And the fresh, smart scenery and lighting is by Patrick Huber, with a haunting sound design by Kristi Gunther. It's all so simple. But it clears the path to amazing new depths. Long Day's Journey Into Night, a St. Louis Actors' Studio production, runs through February 23, 2025, at Gaslight Theater, 358 N. Boyle Avenue, St. Louis MO. For tickets and information, please visit www.gaslighttheater.net. Cast: Production Staff: * Matthew Arnold, "Memorial Verses" (1850), a quote etched above the south entrance to the St. Louis Art Museum. Thanks to Bryan S. Young, Associate Librarian, Richardson Memorial Library, at the St. Louis Art Museum. ** Denotes Member, Actors' Equity Association |
