Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Robert O’Hara’s trimmed and modernized LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT brings a newfound relevance to the classic

• By drediman
• January 26, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Robert O’Hara’s timely take on Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night opened Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theatre courtesy of Audible Theater. The staging is notable for both trimming and modernizing the classic play, which is now set during our current pandemic times. Indeed, leave it to Mr. O’Hara – who recently scorched Broadway audiences with his production of Jeremy O. Harris’s emotionally eviscerating Slave Play – to bring newfound relevance to the classic. Indeed, his one-act revival sheds the minutes and the cobwebs from the lengthy but beloved downer and is alive with fresh, visceral feeling that still lingers in my thoughts.

Although the setting has been updated and Mr. O’Hara has judiciously excised much of the dialogue, the resulting production is still very much recognizably O’Neill’s play. In fact, the revival’s modernizations are merely suggested through stage action as opposed to tweaks to the work’s language (for example, the transference of tuberculosis to covid and morphine usage to heroin shoot-ups are solely suggested by the staging). By operating on both plains, the production elegantly avoids gimmickry, thereby appeasing both traditionalists, as well as more adventurous theater goers. Additionally, by setting the play during the pandemic and employing a racially divided cast, Mr. O’Hara hauntingly merges the play’s themes with the concerns of today – e.g., the toxicity arising from stagnancy; the deeper exploration of the knotted history that accompanies racial/familial relations – thereby allowing both to come into sharper focus.

Mr. O’Hara’s strikingly designed revival (kudos particularly to Yee Eun Nam for his mesmerizing projection design) features performances that smartly humanizes the play’s typically grandiose, archetypal characters, resulting in a cascade of scenes that are punchier and more accessible than what you’d expect from O’Neill’s play. As the family patriarch and matriarch James and Mary Tyrone, Bill Camp and Elizabeth Marvel are sensational, giving performances of disarming specificity. Ms. Marvel – one of New York’s most fearless stage actors – in particular gives a performance that hits you in the gut. Two fine Black actors (Jason Bowen and Ato Blankson-Wood) have been chosen to play the damaged Tyrone sons Jamie and Edmund, and they bring refreshing new dimensions to these well-trodden roles.

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LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
Off-Broadway, Play
Audible Theater at Minetta Lane Theatre
1 hour, 50 minutes (without an intermission)
Through February 20