Here comes the night

By jasmine koh Catalyst

Send comments to: catalyst@wildcat.arizona.edu

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Daily Wildcat photo by Tim Fuller Ruth Reid and Lawrence Pressman bridge family gaps in the Arizona Theatre Company's production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

Eugene O'Neill just had a way of putting words - sad, simple truths - into his character's mouths.

"None of us can help the things life has done to us. They're done before you realize it, and once they're done, they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you'd like to be, and you've lost your true self forever."

Such are the lives of the Tyrone family as expressed by Mary Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, the epic that posthumously brought O'Neill his fourth Pulitzer Prize now in production by Arizona Theatre Company.

The fog rolls in around the Tyrone family's summer house as we are introduced to Tyrone, a miserly father and aging matinee actor, his troubled wife Mary and their sons Jamie and Edmund. Through the course of this 3-hour production, layers of family half-truths and secrets are stripped away and revealed. Long Day's Journey Into Night is considered to be O'Neill's most autobiographical work; an intimate, painful portrait of his own family.

Arizona Theatre Company has put together a stellar group of theater professionals who have made this production a delight to watch. Directed by Marshall W. Mason, a five-time Tony award nominee, this production finds the comic moments that endear us to the family and draw us into their lives and problems. Through the use of overlapping dialogue, we are also given a very realistic, believable presentation of a family.

The actors are all extremely convincing as their characters come to terms with their pasts, presents and futures. Mary, played by Ruth Reid, is a treat to watch as she teeters on the edge between lucidity and her addiction to morphine. Reid brings a fragile yet enduring woman to life, who is a wandering soul in a house of shadows and gloom.

Lawrence Pressman gives a exemplary performance as the Irish, over-the-hill matinee idol who has had to deal with his wife's addiction and who constantly hopes for it to just go away. Pressman gives a good portrayal of the domineering, miserly patriarch who is ruled by his past and principles and fails to see what his family really needs.

Kim Bennett, who plays Jamie, seems a little too dispassionate at the very beginning of the play, but as it progresses, his portrayal of the good-natured but flawed individual is commendable. Bennett is also a wonderfully flamboyant drunk.

Jason Kuykendall does an admirable job bringing to life Edmund Tyrone, the character based on O'Neill himself. Dealing with his character's diagnosis of consumption and the addiction of his mother, Kuykendall infuses his character with a sensibility that makes Edmund a delight to watch.

Shana Bousard brings a needed element of joy and spirit to this epic in the form of her character Cathleen.

The set, designed by Ming Cho Lee, helps create the mood of the play. Using only black and grays, Lee presents us with a world that is gloomy and awaiting a tribulation. Laura Crow costumes the actors predominantly in whites and beige, which contrasts the set, yet creates and perhaps strengthens, the affinity between the family members.

All in all, this production is a treat to watch - a somber yet revealing night at the theater.