Long Day's Journey Into Night @ The Lyceum

Long Day's Journey into Night was Eugene O'Neill's dark, moody and dramatic swansong, only released after his death by his instuction owing to its thorough, and personal, exposé of the dark currents often underlying the family institution. Fraught with tension, unspoken resentments, can't-talk-abouts, double motives, regret, restlessness, and explosive tempers, it deals with dysfunction exacerbated by alcoholism and drug addiction.

Sadly this particular production has little to recommend it. It launches with an argument that doesn't sound like an argument and the relaying of a funny story that doesn't sound like a funny story – beginning, in classic fashion, as it intends to continue. One is left to wonder whether director, Tony Cowie, has ever been present during a full blown family row. No one gets in anyone's face. People tell each other to shut up sounding neither provoked, nor producing any provocation in others. Each of the actors seems to be in their own world, performing merely to themselves. There is no cohesive chemistry on stage. The portrayal are either inconsistent, or so consistent that characters are reduced to only ever having one tone.

While the script for Long Day's Journey... is reaming with foreshadowing and set-ups for major themes which expose the characters' underlying motives, none of these threads are appropriately exploited to further the catharsis of bland reveals in which the audience should rightfully be enjoying an "ahhh" moment. The set makes it hard for much of the audience to see the dining room and characters regularly walk through its invisible walls as no one seems to have decided where the entrances are.

Eugene O'Neill was a part of the realist movement in literature, but there is little of that to be found in The Lyceum; the action verges more often towards melodrama.