LA Review: 'Long Day's Journey Into Night'

Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical 1942 drama, first staged in 1956, remains among the most challenging American classics. It's a heaping helping to digest, reportedly running almost four hours in its original production and coming close to that length in Actors Co-op's staging. Skillful actors are required to do justice to O'Neill's soaring poetry, to energize lengthy low-key scenes that alternate with more intense interactions, and to get underneath the skin of very complex characters. There are rewards in director Marianne Savell's intelligent and tasteful rendition, though the effort falls short of an unqualified triumph.

Set in a Connecticut summer home in 1912, "Long Day's Journey Into Night" focuses on a hard-drinking Irish family in physical and emotional meltdown. James Tyrone (Bruce Ladd) is a famous classical actor whose impoverished and dysfunctional upbringing left him emotionally distant and tight with a dollar. Mary (Nan McNamara), his self-deluded wife, tries to keep a dignified front amid problematic family communications, her escalating addiction to morphine, and her denial that her younger son, Edmund (Daniel J. Roberts), the O'Neill persona, has come down with consumption (now called tuberculosis). Edmund's ne'er-do-well elder brother, Jamie (David Scales), an unsuccessful actor, fritters away his time boozing and whoring while harboring resentments toward his more promising sibling. Whisky, narcotics, and ugly recriminations rear their head during one eventful day as the family's attempts at good-natured banter shift to hurtful altercations, interrupted by tender moments.

As the desperately lonely and mentally adrift Mary, McNamara is only intermittently effective. The actor is far better in the later scenes, when Mary's suppressed anxieties and frustrations come to the forefront and she regresses into her past, recalling her wedding and her youthful years studying in a convent. Though McNamara's instinct to illuminate Mary's emotional struggles gradually is sound, she seems too much in control in the early moments. Mary's suppressed nervousness and agitation need to be discernible from the outset. Thankfully, the final scene, in which Mary wanders around, rambling on in a haze, is movingly portrayed, ending this domestic tragedy on a powerfully poignant note.

The finest work comes from Roberts as the prodigious scribe-to-be. The actor perfectly balances a zest for life that one can imagine allowed O'Neill to write with such passionate conviction alongside the young man's deep-seated fears. As Tyrone Sr., Ladd offers a generally solid interpretation. He seems less the self-important thespian than a moody but caring soul, futilely attempting to hold the family together. Scales doesn't consistently communicate Jamie's self-destructive characteristics, though his affecting final scenes with Ladd and Roberts afford richer nuances. Selah Victor is amusing in the brief role of the maid Cathleen.

Gary Lee Reed's set and Paula Higgins' costumes bespeak an air of elegance and conjure the early-1900s setting, and Bill E. Kickbush's evocative lighting is crisply efficient.

Presented by Actors Co-op at the Crossley Theatre, 1760 North Gower St., Hollywood. March 16–April 29. Fri. and Sat., 7:30 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m. (Additional performance Thu., March 29, 7:30 p.m.; no performances Fri.–Sun., April 6–8.) (323) 462-8460 ext. 300 or www.actorsco-op.org.