We saw Eugene O'Neill's masterwork, A Long Day's Journey Into Night, at the Guthrie last evening. There are four very sad characters in this play. Mary is addicted to morphine while her husband, James, and their two sons, Jamie and Edmund, are addicted to alcohol. The play chronicles Mary's downward spiral into her addiction once again while the three male characters employ whiskey to "cope" with the reality--and history--of their lives. The whole play is wrapped in symbolism and the dialogue is both poetic and heartbreaking.
As an English teacher, I should have loved it. I did not.
It felt like one long argument with an obvious and traumatic trajectory. While I appreciated the play's fine literary elements and the supreme acting skills of the cast, I just kept waiting (and waiting and waiting) for it to be over. A more apt title for a drama (and the experience of viewing it) has never been given.
2 comments:
I think the last line is a great recap!
There's only so much heartbreaking I can take.
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