It is as though the Roy family from Succession is mounting a benign takeover of the world’s premium centres of theatre. On Broadway, Jeremy Strong (Kendall) is starring in an Ibsen play, whereas here in
London Sarah Snook (Shiv) has attracted a string of five-star reviews for her dazzling one-woman turn in The Portrait of Dorian Gray . And now it is time for paterfamilias Logan, aka Brian Cox , to take centre stage, in Eugene O’Neill’s unflinching modern classic about one family’s struggle with its multi-headed demons. Long Day’s Journey is regularly cited as the definitive
American drama of the 20th century. Be that as it may – my vote would go to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman – there can be no escaping the fact that the operative word of the title is “long”. The almost three-and-a-half hours of Jeremy Herrin’s production do weigh heavily, as the four members of the tormented Tyrone family, variously addicted to alcohol, drugs and self-delusion, each seek their own oblivion. Initially, all seems to be proceeding Succession -style. James Tyrone (Cox), a touring
Actor, is strong, uncompromising and miserly with money; his sons Jamie ( Daryl McCormack ) and Edmund ( Laurie Kynaston ) lack his sense of direction and purpose. Mary (Patricia Clarkson), James’s peacemaker of a wife, floats intriguingly around. Clarkson is magnificent, giving the performance of the evening, shaping Mary into a figure of almost ethereal radiance, present but also absent. She is, we gradually and painfully learn, a morphine addict, driven to drugs by grief and loneliness, while her husband and sons seek solace in long, whisky-fuelled sessions in bars. Read Next Myles Frost is an eerily good Michael Jackson in MJ the Musical The action takes place over the course of a day, and as the night draws in and the play’s four acts roll on, we settle into a sort of trance or fever dream with the Tyrones. A pattern is established, of brutal verbal lashing out by one family member at another, followed by instant repudiation and contrition; so often is this repeated that we begin to tire of it. As James revisits childhood demons, Cox struggles to shift register sufficiently and convinces us a little less of the weight of the wounds he bears, especially in comparison to Clarkson’s deep mining of truth. That magnetic performer Kynaston beautifully captures young Edmund’s early-onset nihilism and aura of wasted potential, as the spectre of serious illness from tuberculosis looms. Lizzie Clachan’s unlovely set of wood panels resembles an overgrown sauna, but is in keeping with Herrin’s admirable mission to interpolate no cheap flourishes of any kind into the production. All focus is on O’Neill’s mighty words about human fallibility, of how other people’s flaws and weaknesses always appear so much easier to fix than our own unquiet souls. To 8 June at Wyndham’s Theatre , WC2 ( 0344 482 5151 )