Eugene O'Neill's ultimate family tragedy. A heartrending portrait of four people unable to live with -- or without -- each other.
Long Day's Journey into Night chronicles a single day in the life of the Tyrone family. From sunrise to sunset, we follow the parents James (Gijs Scholten van Aschat) and Mary (Marieke Heebink) and their two sons Jamie (Ramsey Nasr) and Edmund (Roeland Fernhout) in their struggle against each other and against the demons from their past. Even as the mother denies her morphine addiction, the other family members keep silent about the youngest son's tuberculosis. No one in the family seems to be capable of facing up to the reality that they are all living lives of self-deception and unfulfilled dreams.
It was Eugene O'Neill's wish that his masterpiece would not be published until after his death, and it's no mystery why: the piece is a frank portrayal of his own youth, overshadowed by his mother's addiction and his father's and brother's alcoholism. Yet, it also attests to the deep love and sympathy binding the family members together.
Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953) is America's most influential playwright. His 'realism of the soul' was strongly influenced by Greek tragedies and Shakespeare, in whom he appreciated the elevated emotionality. When asked about his preference for the tragic he replied: 'Sure, I'll write about happiness, if I ever happen to meet up with that luxury, and find it sufficiently dramatic and in harmony with any deep rhythm of life. But happiness is a word. What does it mean? Exaltation: an intensified feeling of the significant worth of man's being and becoming? Well, if it means that — and not a mere smirking contentment with one's lot — I know there is more of it in tragedy than in all the happy-ending plays ever written.' O'Neill was repeatedly awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for drama and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936.
Ivo van Hove has a special relationship with Eugene O'Neill. With Het Zuidelijk Toneel, he successfully directed Mourning Becomes Electra, Desire Under the Elms and More Stately Mansions. With Staatstheater Stuttgart, he directed Desire Under the Elms, More Stately Mansions with the New York Theatre Workshop (Obie Award best director), Strange Interlude with the Münchner Kammerspiele and with Toneelgroep Amsterdam, the acclaimed Mourning Becomes Electra. Van Hove in de Volkskrant: 'I always call him the American Shakespeare. Many of his plays are autobiographical, everything makes sense, nothing is made up, but it is still the great art of theatre. He can turn the most personal story into a universal tale. Apart from that, he is one of the few people who succeeded in building up a large oeuvre, while writing in different styles. From peasant dramas to the so-called sea plays, switching from a naturalistic style to an expressionistic one. And he loves digging around in the deepest crypts of the soul. In this context, he writes about 'realism of the soul', which does not mean you have to stage it realistically, which is often misunderstood. It purely means that he looks for the level of truth in that which goes on in people's souls. For me, he is the playwright who expresses this idea in the most personal, universal, but at the same time also the most extreme way. This is why I am drawn to him once every couple of years.'
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