There is a common conceit in great drama (and comedy for that matter too.) Using all the events, emotions, and intersections in a single day as a culmination of one's existence. 1973's "American Graffiti" gives you one final night as high school buddies cruise the hometown strip for the last time. Why does it work so well? Because this is a day that we (in hindsight) wish to live over and over again. Even the conflicts, which at the time seemed life-altering, visibly change us as viewers from the beginning to end.
Eugene O'Neill had a horrific home life. Beneath the veil of near-upper-class privilege, O'Neill's upbringing was one long existential battle. If his digestion of the serious drama of Ibsen and Strindberg led him in the path of intensely felt family dramas, his epitaph changed drama forever. Japanese Noh theatre is a brand of drama that depends solely on physical movement and the display of masks. The stories it tells are factual in nature. The method of viewing is to employ the complete versatility of each actor.
Of course, most Broadway plays and productions follow a hierarchy of actors through their prime motives and secondary pursuits. O'Neill is out to mix that up completely where actors are acting their roles, and furthering their roles based on how they interact with each other. While, O'Neill is certainly not the first to accomplish this feat, for American playwrights he establishes the precedent that guides most major dramas today.
Suffering from depression and alcoholism, O'Neill developed a Parkinson's-like shake in his hands (pay close attention to what the mother Mary says about her medicinal needs and how they dashed her dreams) that made writing difficult. Still, O'Neill soldiered on constructing three autobiographical plays: "The Iceman Cometh" (written in 1939, first staged in 1946,) "A Moon For The Misbegotten" (started in 1941, finished shortly before his death in 1953,) and "Long Day's Journey Into Night."
Marrying the actress Carlotta Monterey in 1929, allowed O'Neill to focus upon his writing. Unfortunately, Monterey developed an addiction to the sedative potassium bromide. This put great strain on their relationship because (as "Journey" tells) O'Neill's mother Mary Ellen Quinlan developed an addiction to morphine following the difficult birth of Eugene. As O'Neill descended further into alcoholism, it also became a flashpoint for painful childhood memories that involved his father and late brother Jamie.
So, like one lengthy Arthur Janov-esque primal scream, O'Neill took the trauma of his life as a young man (the youngest son Edmund in "Journey") and created one of the most riveting yet pain-inducing plays ever. Knowing the explosive capacity of this work, O'Neill sealed it and gave it to Random House with specific instructions not to publish it until 25 years after his death. After his death in 1953, Monterey interceded and Random House bowed to her demands bringing it to light in 1956.
"Long Day's Journey Into Night" takes place at a Connecticut summer house. much like the O'Neill's Monte Cristo cottage. The Tyrones live there, but as you can immediately discern, this house is not a home. If it were not for the proscenium arch viewing of the set (which O'Neill provides in full detail down to the names of the books on the shelves,) you could easily see battle lines being drawn in this ghostly manse. James Tyrone, Sr. is a distinguished older actor who has made his name (and money) in fulfilling prescribed roles and buying property. He still has a wisp of Irish in him, so it makes perfect sense that a bottle of whiskey would be on the table. His sons could not be any different. Jamie, the older son, is world-weary and in a word "disappearing." In the beginning, Jamie has to fight to be heard. His suspicions not only go unanswered, but are immediately rebuffed and filed away. Early on in the work, it is a relief when they all share a drink - because it is a moment where they finally share something other than their last name.
O'Neill as Edmund is slightly more complex. A world traveler, Edmund has returned home with a nagging cough. His travels have provided a worthy education, but not without learning in context that he perhaps squandered his elite schooling (O'Neill attended Princeton for one year and was apparently kicked out for throwing a bottle of beer through a professor's window. That instructor was Woodrow Wilson, soon to become our 28th President.) Edmund is a bit more of judgement call for you as a viewer. We want to feel sympathetic for him as the impending worry is that nasty hacking is the beginning of tuberculosis or as Mary calls it "consumption." Still, as the youngest, Edmund is coddled by Mary, sometimes sweetly and at others where you can feel how this worship puts Jamie and James at odds.
Finally, there is Mary, the centerpiece of nearly every scene. As the play opens, Mary is returning from the sanatorium having kicked her morphine habit. This is not explicitly stated in the play. Instead, O'Neill leaves you to deduce this from an ongoing, almost too-ebullient series of compliments paid to her about being "fat and sassy." (We reveal this not as a spoiler, but due to its importance.) James especially beams with pride over his love for her, and O'Neill makes it hard to feel anything else. Jamie introduces doubt into the works and "Journey" quickly develops into exploring the realm of possibilities that only lead back to either mistrust that Mary is using again, or (more chillingly) all the mentioning of his habit driving her back to it. Either way, you instantly feel both O'Neill's cursed childhood and the Tyrones' as yet another example (like "Anna Christie") that you simply cannot escape the past.
The past is the present, isn't it? It's the future, too. We all try to lie out of that but life won't let us.
O'Neill uncorks this family drama over this excruciating day, but it is so hard to turn away. These are not lives in wreckage. Towards the middle, Mary and the servant Cathleen (thankfully here for comic relief) engage in a trip down memory lane where you can feel Mary's hopes drifting away in the fog that surrounds their domicile. The effect is an odd bit of warmth, yet chilling. Mary's beaming face clearly wants to soak up all the light it can (she even pulls the non-relative Cathleen closer,) but we know it is fleeting. Instead, the fog represents the impending doom and confusion that follows.
Victorian drama (and Shakespeare for that matter) depends upon telling one character one detail or emotion, and then acting differently as another character enters the scene. This element of purposeful confusion is the three-card monte of the stage. We as the viewers know everything. In "Journey," O'Neill makes us feel as if we know nothing. The Tyrones spar like a family would. Each competing to get a word into conversation, and then taking a deep pause before being asked to reveal the truth. Mary swings from mood-to-mood in a single conversation. Like an itinerant but loving mother, she can reduce her sons to rubble, her husband to dust, and even call out Cathleen without batting an eye. That maternal aspect of her existence makes listening to James, Jamie, and Edmund engage in a battle of wills about her using when she is away so teeth-gnashing. Whether O'Neill intended it to be this way or not, the single hardest emotion to take away from their clashing like rams is their love for her. Like the true genius O'Neill was (and those masks from Noh theatre,) when the three return to their "loving" mask for her as she reenters the room - the sting is barely dulled.
At four hours in length, this four-act play is one of the most decorated theatre productions of all time. (Tonys in 1958, 1986, 2003, 2016. Acting awards for Vanessa Redgrave, Sir Laurence Olivier, and Jessica Lange. It established the career of Jason Robards, who fortunately had worked beside O'Neill before his death. Robards and a handful of others have been able to preserve the tradition of O'Neill's works for new generations.) However, it is as "difficult" (if not more) than Pinter or other modernists. "Journey" is not a play to roll over. Even watching it requires breaks for thought and revision. Rest assured though because the dialogue says it all. Its interpretation is entirely up to you.
Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see—and seeing the secret, are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on toward nowhere, for no good reason!
—
Mik Davis is the record store manager at T-Bones Records & Cafe in Hattiesburg.
NEW MUSIC This Week: WOMEN RULE EDITION
DUA LIPA - Radical Optimism [RED LP/ WHITE LP/CD] (Warner) • London's Dua Lipa is more than a model turned singer/songwriter. She will likely be remembered as a songwriter most of all. Unlike other superstars, Dua Lipa has her hands in all stages of the writing process. While she has still not had that huge US breakthrough yet ("Levitating" kicked off the COVID-era Dance music revival and reached Diamond status here,) "Radical Optimism" throws back to classic Disco ("Illusion,") French House ("Houdini.") and even the playful 2000s dance Pop like Kylie Minogue ("Training Season.") As always, Dua Lipa is gifted with memorable choruses (specially constructed around her falsetto reaches) and smart production from Danny L.Harle (Caroline Polachek) and Kevin Parker (Tame Impala.) "Radical Optimism" works because Dua Lipa is not trying to find Pop success - as always, she is content that it will find her and find her as herself.
CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON - Cyan Blue [LP/CD] (XL/Redeye) • While Day Wilson is not quite out of nowhere (her first collaborations were with Daniel Caesar and BadBadNotGood,) the single "Canopy" works because it feels so foreign. Day Wilson's husky voice and the sensual production have more in common with modern R&B than modern Pop or Indie music. However, "Canopy" has a devilish hook that only becomes more heated as you listen. Day Wilson is so smooth and refined that even the simplest lines ("It's like a canopy, all that hate And I'm above it, can't live that way") are delivered like they were written with veins of ice yet delivered like red-hot embers of heat. When Day Wilson switches into ballad gear on "I Don't Love You," she can leave a lump in your throat and still shines with radiant beauty. It is criminal that providing us with a pair of the best singles this year has only netted her about 60,000 YouTube views and neither one crossing one million plays. "Cyan Blue" will hopefully make that change.
CAMERA OBSCURA - Look To The East, Look To The West [GREEN SPLATTER LP/CD] (Merge/ AMPED) • Blessed with one of the coolest voices in Indie Rock, Camera Obscura has grown in stature thanks to the breezy music and sweet evocation of Tracyanne Campbell. On their first album in eleven years, they sound more muscular and soulful than before. For a band founded after the "Twee" Pop emergence (still hate that epithet) of Belle and Sebastian, Camera Obscura found a way to stand apart from the other Glaswegians following the line of ascent from Postcard Records in the Eighties through the C86 craze to Nineties Indie Rock. "Big Love" is a jangling wonder with a stomping Country beat and steel guitar. But it is no bow to Americana, it could be Lone Justice or it could be The Proclaimers. The comparisons drop off even further for the sublime "We're Gonna Make It In A Man's World," where Campbell could be a spritely Petula Clark serving up a slice of London Sixties Pop. As gentle as the song is musically, the lyrics have that rare Camera Obscura sense of bite ("The birds and bees/They have been sweet to me/Take your report/Shove it right down your throat.") Most bittersweet of all is hearing the different keyboards on the record, a subtle reminder of the lineage of the late Carey Lander to the new addition Donna Maciocia, who along with the band is maintaining the tradition of their classic "French Navy" spirit.
EMILY NENNI - Drive & Cry [LP/CD](New West/ Redeye) • Cowboy hat-wearing cowgirl has been kicking around the backline of Americana singer/songwriters for a couple of albums. The Bay Area coo-er sounds familiar to fans of Dolly and Emmylou, and can be almost as brassy ("Get To Know Ya.") Working with Deslondes producer John James Tourville and master mixer Matt Ross-Spang (Jason Isbell,) "Drive & Cry" fulfills the aural promise of the earlier pair of records with focused arrangements that line up her songwriting better. Nenni has never written or sounded better than the Opry-ready swing-for-the-fences sing-to-the-rafters "Changes." Deep meaning and clever lyrically during its verses, "Changes" is the first true showcase of Nenni's range. When she arrives at the big push/key change in the end you can feel the heat of footlights on the famous stage at the Ryman.
