A definitive staging of an American masterpiece
Betty Friedan's groundbreaking sociological page-turner "The Feminine Mystique" came out more than 20 years after Eugene O'Neill penned his magnum opus Long Day's Journey Into Night . Yet in Court Theatre's revelatory staging of the 1912-set drama, the story of morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone could be one of the thousands of case studies that led Friedan to define "the problem that had no name."
O'Neill sets the brooding story in a sprawling coastal beach house. Mary flutters and twitches through the opening scene, nervous, resentful and fearful. Her husband James (Harris Yulin), older son James Jr. (Dan Waller) and younger son Edmund (Michael Doonan) are watchful and tense, but also clearly exhilarated and hopeful.
O'Neill gradually reveals the source of this fraught thicket of emotions: Mary's recently back from a sanitarium, newly needle-free after years of shooting up in the spare bedroom when she thought no one was looking.
Edmund's fragile health compounds the family's troubles. He may be dying, but Mary is in denial as deep as the Egyptian river, snappishly insisting that her baby has nothing more serious than a cold. James Jr. isn't dying, but he's clearly an alcoholic, and in his early 30s, has nothing to show for his life but VIP status at the local whorehouse and a vicious desire to damage the people he loves.
The plot follows the family through the titular long day, and into a night when a hellscape of family traumas and ugly secrets surge through the house with a force that calls to mind that tsunami of blood that gushes from the elevator in "The Shining." By dawn, the home feels as if it's filled with fog and ghosts.
O'Neill uses fog as a metaphor throughout, a device that could be laughably melodramatic in the wrong hands. In Auburn's direction, it's chilling. "(Fog) hides you from the world, and the world from you," Mary says in one exquisitely rendered scene, "No one can find or touch you anymore." You can all but feel the cotton-soft shroud of opiates cushioning her synapses.
Of course opiates only last so long, and Mary's placid sense of contentment is illusory. When the pain roars back, she's defenseless. When she complains that she has no one to talk to, no place to go, and no purpose beyond managing the servants, she's articulating the titular phenomenon of Friedan's book: The soul-crushing realization that a spouse, a house and children often do not add up to anything even approaching fulfillment. The best James Sr. can offer to fill Mary's emotional void? A used car.
It's telling that Mary is drowning in the past before the night is out. Her happiest memories revolve around her teen years, when playing the piano and dreams of being a nun gave her some sense of agency. Never is Mary's doom more apparent than it is when she tries and fails to play the piano. With hands crippled by arthritis, her memories curdle into mockery.
Fisher powers the production with a virtuosic performance. Mary Tyrone is wildly overwrought for much of Long Day's Journey , and like the repeated references to fog, her florid state makes it easy for the role to degenerate into ham. There's not a false note in Fisher's performance. The emotion is huge, but it is never overinflated.
As James Jr., Waller gets a soul-baring monologue in the final act, a drunken requiem he delivers with an impact that sears its way down to your bones. Doonan's tubercular Edmond is haunted, a feverish sheen to his eyes and a bearing that subtly indicates a body under siege by sickness.
As the maid Cathleen, Alanna Rogers shows a woman as simple and straight-forward as the Tyrones are tormented and self-deceptive. Her scenes pepper the production with comic relief.
Set designer Jack Magaw's spacious interior evokes one of New England's grand, shambling coastal estates, a beautiful place battered and scoured by salt, wind and time. Toy Deiorio's sound design makes a dirge of that all-important foghorn. And with a hint of crying gulls, she evokes the drowning expanse of ocean mere steps from the Tyrones' house.
After O'Neill finished Long Day's Journey Into Night , he locked it away with orders that it wasn't to be published until after his death. Given that, it's tempting to surmise the piece is deeply autobiographical. Whether that's the case or not, you'll recognize these people and their battles. And you will surely recognize that Auburn has helmed a definitive staging of an American masterpiece.
Long Day's Journey Into Night continues through April 10th at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis (map), with performances Wednesdays & Thursdays at 7:30pm, Fridays 8pm, Saturdays 3pm & 8pm, Sundays 2:30pm & 7:30pm. Tickets are $45-$65, and are available by phone (773-753-4472) or online through their website (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com ). More information at CourtTheatre.org. (Running time: 3 hours 30 minutes, includes intermission)
Harris Yulin (James Tyrone), Mary Beth Fisher (Mary Tyrone), (James Tyrone Jr.), Michael Doonan (Edmund Tyrone), Alanna Rogers (Cathleen), Charles Stransky (u/s James Tyrone), Susie Griffith (u/s Mary Tyrone), Josh Hambrook (u/s James Jr. and Edmund Tyrone), Amanda Fink (u/s Cathleen).
behind the scenes
David Auburn (director), (scenic design), Melissa Torchia (costume design), (lighting design), Toy Deiorio (sound design), Cree Rankin (casting), Amanda Weener-Frederick (production stage manager), Erin Albrecht (stage manager), Jeri Frederickson (asst. stage manager), Charlie Marie McGrath (asst. director), Adam Goldstein (dialect coach), Matt Hawkins (fight choreographer). Christina Carlson (wig design), Michael Brosilow (photos)
Tags: 16-0340, Adam Goldstein, Alanna Rogers, Amanda Fink, Amanda Weener-Frederick, Betty Friedan, Catey Sullivan, Charles Stransky, Charlie Marie McGrath, Chicago Theater, Christina Carlson, Court Theatre, Cree Rankin, Dan Waller, David Auburn, Erin Albrecht, Harris Yulin, Jack Magaw, Jeri Frederickson, Josh Hambrook, Lee Keenan, Mary Beth Fisher, Matt Hawkins, Melissa Torchia, Michael Brosilow, Michael Doonan, post, Susie Griffith, Toy DeIorio, Victoria DeIorio