William Hurt, Todd Van Voris, Robyn Nevin and Luke Mullins. © Photo by Jez Smith 2010

POSTED: 06 JULY 2010

Long Day's Journey into Night, by Eugine O'Neill

Sydney Theatre Company & Artists Repertory Theatre | Sydney Theatre, Walsh Bay, Sydney | Until 1 August

As I write this review I hear the gnashing of teeth on Hawaii’s Big Island, where another Oz Baby Boomer theatre reviewer, Sandra Bowden, is holidaying. She regards young Luke Mullins as probably Australian theatre’s most rapidly rising star, and would have given an arm and a leg — though obviously not the chance of snorkelling with dolphins — to have seen him share the stage with Australian living treasure Robyn Nevin and legendary American stage and screen actor William Hurt.

At least she can swim assured that Mullins’ performance was exemplary in this joint production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night by Sydney Theatre Company and Oregon’s Artists Repertory Theatre.

The play — a hefty three-hour marathon — was written in 1941 but not performed till 15 years later, when it won O’Neill his fourth, this time posthumous, Pulitzer Prize.

It’s the tale of a family’s alcohol-and-drug-fuelled disintegration during a long and fateful day on one of its regular summer breaks on the Connecticut seaside.

James Tyrone (William Hurt) is a financially successful but professionally dissatisfied actor who can stand like a schoolyard bully over a family which has been dragged around the country on a theatrical milkrun. He mightn’t quite be an alcoholic but he certainly likes a drink and is afflicted with a significant dose of stinginess.

His wife Mary (Robyn Nevin) is a striking woman addicted to morphine, embittered by never having been afforded “the home” she so desperately desires, and gut-wrenchingly worried about the health of her younger son Edmund (Luke Mullins).

Edmund likes a drink, too, and is definitely unwell — so unwell, indeed, that by late afternoon of the long day he has been diagnosed as suffering from consumption (tuberculosis). He’s the family’s intellectual, socially aware, working as a writer and poetically inclined.

If James and Edmund are practising to be alcoholics, older son Jamie, played by American Todd Van Voris, is the real thing, the whole box and dice. He’s an actor, too, but also a cynical womaniser with a streak of irresponsibility that his father despairs of.

Initial perceptions are that the quartet do genuinely love each other, even if that doesn’t always translate into total respect. Largely, that love seems to hold up, even as the day deteriorates. What’s interesting, though, is its fragility. It only takes a minor, quite superficial scratch to reveal deeply held resentments and for those resentments to be openly and quite viciously brandished.

The performances, finely honed by Andrew Upton’s direction, combine into a tour de force.

Hurt is wonderful as the strident, domineering but quite dissatisfied father. To sit within a few metres of the stage and watch such an icon is awesome... in the true sense of the word.

Nevin’s hand-wringing, twitchy, sitting-on-the-edge-of-an-abyss portrayal of Mary is almost too realistic for comfort... mine anyway. Take away the morphine addiction and feelings of deprivation and it could have been my own late mother’s love, pain and worry.

Van Voris, who will be much better known to regulars at Oregon’s Artists Repertory Theatre than to Sydneysiders, perfectly plays the bumptious layabout, and provides one of the finest personifications of totally drunken inability I can recall.

And yes, Sandra, Luke Mullins is a wonderful actor, one whose sincerity — whether it be a show of angst, anger, empathy or joy — is always totally convincing. I can certainly hear a bigger stage yet calling.

And there must also be words of praise for Emily Russell, who adds such a scintillating and joyous touch as Cathleen, the slightly dippy but endearing servant, and for set designer Michael Scott-Mitchell. The slightly industrial, concrete edge to his depiction of an American summer retreat at first seems a little bizarre yet it seems to beautifully fit — and I’m still not quite sure why — the context of Long Day’s Journey into Night.

This isn’t always an easy piece of theatre to consume, but ultimately it’s an enormously satisfying one.

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