Long Day's Journey Into Night
- Robert Beale
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
Eugene O’Neill
Elysium Theatre
Empty Space, Salford
May 23, 2026: 3 hrs 30 mins
(also May 25 at Princess Alexandra Auditorium, Yarm; May 26 at The Witham, Barnard Castle; May 27 at Washington Arts Centre, Sunderland; May 28 at Theatre 41, York; May 29 & 30 at Dukes Lancaster)
Long Day’s Journey Into Night is known as a play that shows life in one household over a period stretching close to 24 hours. But it feels even longer than that.
It’s considered a classic of American theatre, partly because Eugene O’Neill didn’t want it to be published until 25 years after his death and (apparently) said it was never to be performed. Maybe if he had seen it, he would have cut it, as it’s really, really long.
You have to admire Jake Murray and his Elysium Theatre Company for marking the 70th anniversary of its publication and first performances (which were actually only three years after O'Neill died) with a tour of smaller northern theatres, performing in a different venue almost every night. This middle week has meant four performances Monday to Friday, and there are six to come next week, but I wonder whether the toll of travelling and getting into new venues under such pressure has left its mark. The sound system relaying supposedly off-stage voices, upstairs footsteps, etc., was ludicrously over-loud at most times last night (just once it wasn’t used and natural voices were fine).
Add to that the misfortune that the key role of Mary Tyrone had to be re-cast at the last minute (it was announced the day before the opening night, nearly two weeks ago). Respect in full measure to Joyce Branagh for taking it on, but at the end of week two she was still doing it from the book and it seemed reading with her eyes on the page much of the time.
With such a handicap it’s not surprising the play came over more as a run-through than a committed performance, the first act slightly rushed as if everyone knew there was still so much to come (though it began to pick up from Act 2, scene two).
The story is nearly 100% autobiographical, O’Neill’s father, mother, brother and self, depicted in their summer home in 1912. Father is a former actor who sold out to easy money as a one-time matinee idol and is obsessed with holding on to property despite his failed investments (his son Jamie calls him Gaspard, after the miser in the popular late 19th Century operetta Les Cloches de Corneville). He was well portrayed as regards his attitude and physical decline by Edmund Dehn, though his habit of pausing his lines was disconcerting at times.
Older son Jamie is a chip off the old block, making a bit of a living from acting because of his father’s name, but angry, a womaniser and a drinker (even more than the rest of the household, where whiskey is the shared ambrosia). Danny Solomon made a very good fist of him, the most believable of them all.
Younger son Edmund is O’Neill himself in his younger days, intellectual, longing for something more than life has given him and already ailing with tuberculosis. Daniel Bradford gives the character a worthy quality, if not inspiring.
Mary is supposed to be addicted to morphine, first given to her in the painful birth of Edmund, and consequently both haggard and a bit overweight and emotionally highly erratic. Joyce Branagh gets close to something convincing and sympathetic with her, despite the presence of the script in her hand, and particularly in the final scene of Act 2 and in Act 4.
Cathleen, the maid – “amiable, ignorant and clumsy” – is the light relief. Macy Stasiak gets the laughs in the otherwise grimly depressing household group, which is a blessing. At the end, classic or no classic, it’s a nihilistic play with few redeeming features – at least in this version.
More info and tickets here
