Page 24 - 2018 Festival Edition

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Becoming a family to portray the breakdown of one
LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT
ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION ABILITY CHOICE FREEWILL OPPORTUNITY LIBERTY RELEASE REDEMPTION
GALEN SIMMONS
Sta Reporter
When actors work in close proximity over a long period time, a kind of symbi- otic relationship is formed.
A rhythm is established, personalities are fleshed out, and emotions are ex- pressed – good and bad. Yet regardless of what happened in the previous day’s rehearsal, those actors have to come together the next day and do it all over again.
In some ways, it’s like they’ve become their own little family, in which members build each other up as much as they tear each other down. They share triumphs, tragedies, and everything in between – be it from the text of the play they are rehearsing or from their own personal lives.
But when that family of actors is asked to portray a family in crisis – as the five-member cast of this season’s production of Long Day’s Journey into Night has been – the lines between the events taking place on stage and those o the stage tend to blur a little.
“It’s been 20 years since the play was done here ... And the fact that we’re doing it in the Studio (Theatre), as opposed to the Tom Patterson Theatre, where it was done before, it will be a very intimate experience for a play that is – conver- sational isn’t the right word – but it is already quite intimate,” said Miles Potter, the play’s director.
“It all takes place in one room, and ... this is a revolutionary production in
the sense that it may be the only one that has ever been done in a space that is the same size as the actual room that (playwright Eugene) O’Neill was writing about.”
O’Neill wrote Long Day’s Journey into Night in 1941, basing the story on a single day in the life of his family in August 1912, as recorded in his personal diary. Because the play so closely mirrors events that took place during his ado- lescence, O’Neill requested it not to be published until 25 years after his death. Shortly after O’Neill died, however, his widow Carlotta Monterey went against her late husband’s wishes and had it published in 1956.
The story told is that of the Tyrone family – the patriarchal and frustrated actor, James Tyrone, Sr.; the morphine-addicted mother, Mary Cavan Tyrone; James “Jamie” Jr., an out-of-work actor and the Tyrones’ eldest son; Edmund, the younger son who, during the play, is diagnosed with tuberculosis; and Cath- leen, the family’s summer maid.
Over four acts, the play spans from 8:30 a.m. to midnight as Edmund awaits his diagnosis, Mary struggles with her morphine addiction after returning from
rehab, James Sr. laments over a career in which he became famous for playing only one character, and Jamie argues with his parents over his drinking and womanizing.
“You always create a family of sorts when you’re in any play, but when you are actually playing a family and there are only four of you in the family, plus your maid Cathleen, you become very close, very fast,” said Seana McKenna, who plays Mary. “It’s a very inti- mate experience, and you all share an equal burden in the play because you all have major roles to carry.”
“There’s no other story here, other than what is happening to this family,” added Scott Went- worth, who plays James Sr. “Even when you’re not physically on the
stage, you kind of are because you know you’re being talked about, or the last thing you said is being dissected and turned around. And quite literally, you’re in the rehearsal hall all the time, so it’s very intense – in a way, much more intense than a Shakespeare play.”
continued on page 25
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THE BEACON HERALD | 2018 FESTIVAL EDITION