‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ Is a Tempest in a Bourbon Bottle
Ben BrantleyApril 27, 2016: A violent storm front has moved into the American Airlines Theater, where Jonathan Kent’s static, star-packed revival of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” opened on Wednesday night, and like so much of our weather these days, it seems to be human-made. It may be the special-effects team that’s generating all that moody fog and wind. But it’s Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Lange, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher Jr. who are providing the thunder and lightning. I mean the histrionic kind, of course, the sort of heavy-weather acting you associate with the distant era in which James Tyrone, the aging, grandstanding matinee idol played (very effectively) by Mr. Byrne, ruled as a king of the stage. Voices are raised, lapels are grabbed, fate is cursed, backs are turned, shoulders are squared, and bodies are sent tumbling to the floor. Yet you can’t avoid the feeling that this tempestuous climate is artificially controlled. All of the leading performers in this production are proven powerhouses. They all have at least moments of the probing intensity that they’ve shown in their previous work. And Mr. Byrne serves one of the most subtle, fine-grained slices of theatrical ham on record.
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