Long Day's Journey Into Night

Well. The title certainly tells you what to expect. It's very long. A bit too long in fact, well the second half anyway. Loved the set although I'll bet it's a bugger to polish every night. Some lovely costumes too. I do love a rolled up trouser leg.

Performances are pretty smashing on the whole I thought. Lesley Manville as the heroine (I thank you) gets to waft about in some lovely frocks although I did tire of her episodes after a while. It's like going to see a Stephen Sondheim musical. You hear a tune which sounds lovely, then you hear it again and you think "OK nice" and then you hear it a third or fourth time and you're thinking "enough already!".

I actually thought Matthew Beard and Rory Keenan were terrific, Keenan especially. Matthew Beard would be smashing in one of those Tennessee Williams plays where the character struggles with being a gayer, he's got lovely sad eyes and a little tattoo on his forearm which I found a thrilling distraction when his shirt sleeve rose up every now and again.

Jeremy Irons was odd, I liked his performance (couldileaveyou says it perfectly) but mostly when he was reacting to the others, particularly Lesley. His reactions were a thing of beauty I thought. Jessica Regan puts in a funny performance as the Irish maid but I thought it was funnier when Catherine Tate played it as a nurse in her TV series.

I do have to say though, I don't know how they read all those books. That bookcase is extremely high and not a ladder in sight. I'll bet the books at the top are fake.

Which boxes are better for this show in terms of angle and view? Any help would be very appreciated

Awww bless, I see there's no Sunday show on 4th March, presumably to allow La Manville to hot foot it to Los Angeles in the morning, lose an Oscar in the evening and head back on a Monday flight for the next show on Tuesday.

Lesley Manville was terrific in this.

On the Oscars, wouldn't it be fun if she and Gary Oldman both won so she could say at the photocall 'big mistake, leaving me for Uma ...'

Jeremy Irons doesn't shout as much and I found him a lot more responsive and sympathetic. A better production all round, really.

Does anyone know if Lesley Manville is planning on attending the Oscars? I'm booked to see this on 6th March and don't want to miss her!

My review:

Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical play comes to the West End in another lengthy production, this time starring Jeremy Irons as ageing actor James Tyrone, and Lesley Manville as his morphine-addicted wife, Mary.

A claustrophobic set lined with books and lights moves the plot forward as first, we see Mary Tyrone in recovery, happy and calm, but soon realise she is in her own reality of dope heaven (or hell). In Manville’s hands the role takes on both the fierceness and deceit of an addict, along with the weakness of the wife and mother who ‘once fell in love with James Tyrone, and was so happy’.

Irons is a theatrical Tyrone, every inch an actor and never a glimpse into the real man. He baits his sons – the shiftless Jamie (Rory Keenan) and the consumptive Edmund (Matthew Beard) – and yet can’t control even the level of whisky in the bottle he keeps on the table. He sees the girl within his wife, but can’t reach her.

The twisting hands, the trailing wedding dress, the lying on the bed with eyes open, the drifting, the drinking, the moments where just for a minute or two Mary Tyrone is happy again. It’s all about her, and the moments where Manville is absent from the stage drag, just a little, in a heart to heart between Irons and Beard where the latter just can’t catch the tragedy of the character.

Keenan, though, is good, filled with self-loathing and self-destruction, on a spiral of disappointment by seeing addiction and disgust all around him. He has his father’s name and perhaps, his weakness too. There’s nothing but a downward spiral for all of them, in this raw and broken world where everyone lies and no one can face what’s really going on around them.

I was in box 4 yesterday afternoon - £25 about an hour before the show so a bargain.

A slow burner, but I did really enjoy it, and particularly I found the acting to be so engaging. Lesley Manville putting in a wonderful performance,

Could this be classified as a memory play, just like Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie?

Manville is great but I found the play and production very dull. I felt every second of those 3hrs 20 and they started late!

There is space in theatre for traditional productions such as this but putting aside my own issues with Eyre as a director and O'Neill as a playwright all the performances were appropriate. Matthew Beard isn't my favourite actor but I warmed to him after this.

Irons is all over the place-odd accent and his diction at the beginning was terrible.

Irons has a throwaway line which explains his accent and diction choice in the VERY LONG HOUR when Manville is absent in the second half, which made me forgive his performance retrospectively. There's a reason why this tends to have the hour long act when Mary is not on stage trimmed down, and while in the right hands that hour can be gripping stuff, here I don't think the hands are quite right....

I couldn't tune back in again to this having lost the will to live a bit in the preceding hour. I was too fidgety to really get gripped by her final moments. Which is a shame. Maybe she could just do a little YouTube video for us all so I could look in again?