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Title: Long Day's Journey into Night, Second edition by Eugene O´Neill, Harold Bloom ISBN: 0-300-09305-5 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.56 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Superb Theatre
Comment: As professor Harold Bloom asserts in his excellent forward: "Eugene O'Neill is single handidly responsible for creating a vibrant and important American Theatre".
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY caps a brilliant artistic life with an autobiographical work that is difficult, complex, tragic, heartbreaking and filled with stunning poetry.
O'Neill's greatest gift was, arguably, his uncanny knack for spinning a poetic phrase. In a bold stroke, he populates the family Tyrone with a menagerie of fragile beings who find strength in language and discourse. It is little wonder that O'Neill demanded that LONG DAY's remain unproduced until after his death. He his boldly facing every personal and familial demon. With crashing honesty and a touch of jet-black humor, he leaves no stone uncovered as he weaves a horrifying tale of the ultimate dysfunctional family.
LONG DAY'S JOURNEY into night is not for the weak of back or the faint of heart. It is depressing to be sure. But among the rubble of these tortured lives, O'Neill finds the spiritual strength in these flawed and fallen angels and creates true linguistic magic. A certain must own for any theatre fan or practitoner. Simply suberb theatre.
Rating: 5
Summary: Timeless themes revolving around the dysfunctional Tyrones!
Comment: I haven't actually read a play since college and I picked this up because I am going to see the Broadway production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night", starring Vanessa Redgrave and Brian Dennhey,and I always find that I appreciate shows like that more if I am familiar with the play itself. It was an enjoyable genre change for me!
What makes this play particularly interesting is the autobiographical nature of the plot (so disturbingly autobiographical, in fact, that O'Neill would not allow its publication and production until after his death!). O'Neill dedicated the play to his wife, basically stating that writing this was his way of coming to grips with his own past and the "4 haunted Tryrones" of his life. I imagine that when this first appeared in the theaters in the 1950s, it struck a sensitive and somewhat controversial chord amongst the public since issues such as drug addiction and alcoholism were not common topics in popular entertainment at the time. I also enjoyed all the literary references to the likes of Shakespeare, Baudelaire and Swineburne (and so forth!). It made me want to acquaint myself with such literary talents once again!
This is another example of a piece of literature that reaches across the decades with timeless themes such as familial love, loyalty, jealousy, guilt and betrayal, as well as depression, addiction and greed. While I pitied and even despised some of the qualities I saw in these characters, I couldn't help empathizing with Mary's nervous addiction as well as James' feeling of disappointment in his past failures. In other words, these characters are all so human, that I couldn't help being drawn into the realistic pathos of their lives.
Rating: 5
Summary: Depresessing, Enthralling...Beautiful.
Comment: If one needs the ultimate example of a classic American play, I would have to say the play about the most un-classic, untypical (or is it?) American family...Eugene O'Neill's "Long Days Journey Into Night." Set in the chlostrophobic New England summer house of the Tyrone's, and spanning over the course of one day, the Tyrone family--the stingy, retired actor James, the lonely opium addicted wife Mary, drunken Jamie, and sensitive, ill Edmund--avoids, denys, confronts and retreats from all their demons, until it is finally night, and they no longer can.
Depressing, huh? Well, of course it is...but within it is something so powerful, so strangely beautiful, that the reader (or viewer) is enthralled. One sees seemingly strong James, ashamed of himself for selling out his acting abilities for financial security. Mary, lonely from James' years of touring, has turned to an opium addiction that she can not seem to confront. Jamie, from hate of his father's stinginess and his own self-blame, loses himself in alcohol and whores. And sweet, artistic, tubulcular Edmund (O'Neill's alter ego) plays witness in the deteration of his family's web of pain, denial and lies. All they want is for morning to come, another day to let the fog come in around them so they can forget again.
In a way, isn't that what we all want to do sometimes? Just forget what's going on around us, even for a while. I would recommend this play as absolutly essential to read--for the fan of the theatre, literature, or a layman. Anyone can relate to the pure, raw emotion and guilt O'Neill conveys. Buy it now, you'll thank me later.
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Title: The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill ISBN: 0375709177 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 07 December, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams ISBN: 0451167783 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1989 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller ISBN: 0140481346 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 06 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee ISBN: 0451158717 Publisher: Signet Pub. Date: August, 1988 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Three Plays : Desire Under The Elms, Strange Interlude, Mourning Becomes Electra by Eugene O'Neill ISBN: 0679763961 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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