Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is considered the first great American playwright. Is Long Day’s Journey Into Night his greatest play? Watching Anthony Page’s superb revival, many theatregoers could easily be persuaded it is. Written, as he confessed, in blood and tears in 1941, this family drama is so painful and so autobiographical that O’Neill did not want it published until 25 years after his death and he didn’t want it to be ever staged. Thirty-five years of sorrow is concertinaed into one long summer day in 1912 during which his miserly father, his morphine-addicted mother, his drunkard of a brother and his young self, a consumptive, rake up the past and tear each other apart. The four of them can neither forget nor forgive and they continuously turn the knife in the open wound. The bitterness, the anger, the self-pity and the constantly repeated recriminations are gruelling, not only for the actors but for the audience as well.
The father (finely acted by David Suchet) is a portrait of James O’Neill (1846-1920) who could have been a great classical actor to rank with Edwin Booth. Instead he was trapped for a quarter of a century in The Count of Monte Cristo, his public wanting to see him in nothing else. He is so mean he cannot even bring himself to spend money on his consumptive son and send him to a decent sanatorium. He thinks he is going to die anyway and the money will be wasted. Kyle Soller and Trevor White make a strong impression as the two boys. Laurie Metcalf’s outstanding performance is something special; but then she has the best role. The mother has been hooked on morphine, ever since her husband employed a quack rather than a proper doctor to see her through a difficult pregnancy. She has lived out her lonely life in second class hotel bedrooms, whilst her husband was on tour, waiting for him to come home drunk. Unable to face the truth of her son’s illness, she gradually falls apart. Metcalf is deeply moving. The production is not to be missed.