A Long Day's Journey into Night

Peter Goetz as James Tyrone and Helen Carey as his wife, Mary

Great writers have the ability to transform personal tragedy into great art. Take playwright Eugene O'Neill. In his hands, the alcoholism that haunted male members of his family and his mother's tragic morphine addiction form the driving impetus behind his masterpiece Long Day's Journey into Night.

Tonight, we attended the Arena Stage performance of that classic, one of 3 O'Neill plays that are at the center for a 2-month Eugene O'Neill Festival now underway in DC.

Almost painful to witness,  Long Day's Journey into Night, which won O'Neill 1 of his 4 Pulitzer Prizes, has to be mentioned in any discussion of the greatest tragic American play ever written.

The play is a disturbing expose of the role of the past as both refuge and burden, as well as the broken communication, ill-conceived illusions, and acute isolation that can exist in families that profess to love one another. "I'm sorry or I didn't mean that," become the constant refrains of the play, as the characters futilely try to atone for hurtful speech or harmful action.

In its review of the play, The Washington Examiner aptly chooses a sub-headline of Four Characters in Search of Peace. But despite vast quantities of alcohol and morphine consumed, the peace each character so desperately craves remains illusive. Just as the literal fog mentioned so often in the play hides both sights and sites outside the setting of their seaside Connecticut home, the characters remain lost to themselves and each other in a mimicking fog of emotional distance and substance abuse they employ to survive the pain of their daily living.

The play leaves you haunted by the final scene of Mary Tyrone, lost in her personal fog of morphine, delivering a last rambling monologue as her drunken husband dejectedly holds her wedding dress and her 2 sons despondently sink into their own alcoholic stupors. For the Tyrones, dark night has truly come. But through O'Neill's brilliant display of his family's personal demons, perhaps those of us fortunate enough to heed the warnings in his play can try to find our way back to the light.

Tales, Tidbits, and Tips
When I studied American drama during my years at Villanova University, I had 3 favorite playwrights. They were Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Eugene O'Neill.  For each, I had a favorite play. For Williams, it was Cat of a Hot Tin Roof. For Miller, it was Death of a Salesmen. And for O'Neill, it was Long Day's Journey into Night. Watching the production tonight, I can say with certainty that my old O'Neill favorite has lost none of its power in the 40 years since I first encountered it.