Set in 1912, the story is a compelling family drama between James Tyrone, Mary Tyrone and their sons, Jamie and Edmund during a long summer’s day.
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Charles Spencer
“This is a masterly production of a masterpiece. It isn’t easy to sit through, but the dramatic rewards are enormous.”
11/04/2012
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Time Out
Caroline McGinn
“O'Neill writes his family as crawling between the past and the future; striving to make it from what they have been to what they long to be; unable, except in moments of supreme self-sacrifice, to be more than what they are. His scorchingly honest portrait of them seems compelled by love as much as despair, which is why the experience of watching it is never depressing. This beautifully acted revival of 'Long Day's Journey' sends you into the night elated, with the sense of something understood.
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11/04/2012
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The Sunday Times
Christopher Hart
“O’Neill is never going to be everyone’s cup of tea. His plays are undoubtedly compelling, and rich in emotional truths, albeit mostly of the painful variety ... He lays on the miserabilism with such a clumsy trowel — drama’s equivalent of Philip Larkin or late Thomas Hardy — that the rest of life, the nuances and other ways of seeing, never get a chance, amid all the anguish and horror. Perhaps aware of this, the director, Anthony Page, cleverly manages to extract some invaluable laughs, rather more than are inherent in the text, especially in the second-half scene between Edmund and his father.
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15/04/2012
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The Times
Libby Purves
“Perhaps the most brilliant of all is Laurie Metcalf as the wife and mother who, during a day that begins in placid sunshine, returns to the drug. At first in ladylike denial about her “medicine”, she declines into delusion , paranoia, pathos, and unwelcome bursts of frankness. Yet all the time her underlying humanity and historic griefs show through ... she, as much as Suchet, is the core of this remarkable evening.”
11/04/2012
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The Independent on Sunday
Kate Bassett
“Beautifully modulated, quietly gripping and sometimes humorous. Suchet is on top form. His uxorious tenderness betrays a subtle trace of wary cosseting and he switches startlingly into an angry bark – directed at his decadent, whisky-swigging sons. Metcalf's performance is, if anything, even better. Her mentally unstable Mary is riveting.
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15/04/2012
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The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“It’s about as far away as you can imagine from a perky night out in the West End, but deeply courageous in its account of O’Neill’s anguished vision.”
11/04/2012
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The Financial Times
Ian Shuttleworth
“Anthony Page’s production pulls off the considerable achievement of making the play not a gruelling experience. Without betraying the aggression, manipulation and general mental imbalance that pervade the family, Page gives equal weight to sincerity and compassion. The two strains feel much more evenly balanced than usual, which makes the repeated tipping-over to the dark side all the more poignant. ”
11/04/2012
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The Guardian
Michael Billington
“What Page's production brings out beautifully is the tortured love under the endless chain of accusation and counter-accusation. Suchet has all the qualities one looks for in James: the vocal resonance, the poker-backed bearing, the self-conscious dignity of a man who brought a Shakespearean technique to crowd-pleasing melodrama ... But, above all, Suchet highlights James's forlorn passion for his wife: when he tells her "it is you who are leaving us", his voice is filled with a sorrowful resignation that stops the heart.”
10/04/2012
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The Observer
Susannah Clapp
“Anthony Page's majestic production ebbs and flows with O'Neill's play: a high-voltage first half, a fainter, more meandering last act, some Angela's Ashes passages, some thunderbolt moments. He brings out with particular skill something central: the importance of acting to this family; addicts are, after all, good at pretending.
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15/04/2012
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The Stage
Mark Shenton
“Page’s production makes the bold choice of allowing the play to simmer rather than rage, and although it is a slow-burn approach, it pays rich dramatic dividends in the richly detailed and layered texturing of the performances behind it.
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11/04/2012
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The Daily Mail
Quentin Letts
“What is O’Neill’s complaint here? Is there something genuinely tragic going on? Or are they just feckless failures who need to pull themselves together? I left the theatre without any sense of tragic cleansing or redemption. I just felt the glooms.
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12/04/2012
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