Long Day’s Journey Into Night starring Brian Cox – Reviews Round-up

"Brian Cox gives a magnetic performance in Long Day’s Journey into Night "

"Love and self-deception course through Eugene O’Neill’s painful family drama at Wyndham’s Theatre, London"

"In Jeremy Herrin’s quietly painful staging, that love is palpable from the outset. There’s a real delight in the way Cox’s James embraces Patricia Clarkson’s Mary, protesting loudly about how well she looks — a kind of frisky joy at the return of the woman she once was and the relationship they once had."

"Herrin and his cast plot this course with caring, painstaking clarity. Cox’s magnetic, bruised James blusters and roars, a man making noise to cover up the terrifying truth that it was his own meanness — hiring a cheap doctor — that got his wife hooked on prescription drugs. His final scene, clutching Mary’s wedding dress in sunken silence, is agonising."

"There’s a bitterly good performance from Daryl McCormack as James Jr... and a superb one from Clarkson as Mary, who gives a mercilessly precise depiction of the loneliness of addiction, warmth suddenly giving way to chilly defensiveness or sly manipulation. And the quiet heart of the play here is Laurie Kynaston’s Edmund"

"It’s not all there yet. The pacing drags sometimes and it’s heavy going in places... But the subtle family dynamics are beautifully traced and the ending is magnificent"

"Brian Cox’s return to stage is a slow-burn marvel"

"Succession fans may need time to acclimatise to Brian Cox’s laudably robust return to the London stage, but his performance was sensational"

"in Jeremy Herrin’s starkly unadorned, straightforwardly unshowy production (which runs to three and a half hours, including interval) initially not even Cox’s declamatory poise can dispel a grinding sense of circular conversation and old-fashioned exposition."

"Yet as more information slips out – about Edmund’s consumptive condition, a long-ago parental tragedy, and Mary’s furtive return to the morphine dependency they had hoped she escaped – it’s as if the repetitive nature of the dialogue becomes a compulsive scratching at the deepest wounds, with pain oozing in all directions. Crucially, the terrific American actress Patricia Clarkson as the stricken matriarch generates an increasingly hypnotic force of unstable energy which each of the men, in their own way, must battle to work around."

"As fog swirls like incense, and bells toll, Clarkson’s hauntingly ethereal Mary regresses into her vanished youth and lost hopes. A riveting period portrait - and a heart-rending mirror of forsaken souls in which we may all glimpse our own familial griefs. Recommended."

"Brian Cox is magnetic in O'Neill for the Succession generation"

"This take on one of the great family dramas of 20th century American theatre is full of pathos and ruined grandeur"

"Despite minor early line-fluffs from Cox and Clarkson on opening night, Jeremy Herrin’s production is full of pathos and ruined grandeur, with superb performances all round."

"Cox is magnetic as Tyrone, volcanic one moment, maudlin the next. He’s well-matched by Clarkson whose prim body language and sly evasions betray the wariness of the secret addict. Tyrone’s bombastic soliloquies are compelling, Mary’s maundering recollections more than usually bearable."

"Kynaston, a former winner of The Evening Standard’s Theatre Award for newcomers, brings great delicacy and watchfulness to Edmund"

"Hell is other family members, just as it was for the Roys. I promised myself I wouldn’t make too many comparisons between Cox’s sublime turn in the best TV show in recent years, and his towering performance here. But, you know, f**k it: this is O’Neill for the Succession generation."

"Monumental testament to domestic agony"

"Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson are tremendous in this hefty American classic"

"You’ll need stamina and a sharp appetite for this Eugene O’Neill classic, a great, bloody slab of American family drama, all meat and gristle."

"Jeremy Herrin’s production, limpidly lit by Jack Knowles, keeps the garnish to a minimum. It’s faultlessly performed by a cast led by Succession’s Brian Cox, here wrestling with another problematic patriarch, and superb US actor Patricia Clarkson as his morphine-addicted wife."

"It’s a demanding experience, which Herrin allows to accumulate its force slowly, but the acting here is dauntless: a monumental testament to domestic agony."

"Because this latest revival stars Brian Cox, returning to the West End stage after ten years, basking in his late period Succession fame, you imagine that the focus will be – as it often is – on the paterfamilias James Tyrone... Yet the fascinating quality of Jeremy Herrin’s sensitive and finely-tuned production is that it turns attention elsewhere."

"In Patricia Clarkson’s eagle-sharp interpretation, Mary isn’t some poetic wispy figure floating through the house, but a dominant force, whose evasions, untruths and occasional moments of absolute knowledge prevent her family from confronting their own demons."

"Cox, all bark and ferocity, plays up the character’s fury, his sense of betrayal, his anger at the world and himself."

"The clarity and directness of Herrin’s production and the way that the cast both speak and listen with absolute intent brings it to vivid life once more."

"Brian Cox’s tyrannical Tyrone is a masterclass in impotent rage"

"The ‘Succession’ star returns to his stage stomping ground, and it’s where he stomps best. Alongside an extraordinary Patricia Clarkson, he owns the stage in Jeremy Herrin’s spare, bleak – and very long – revival of Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece"

"God, this is a miserable play. For three and a half hours, the four members of the Tyrone family – a morphine addict, two alcoholics and a consumptive – shout and mope and recriminate, and director Jeremy Herrin really leans into the misery in his bleak, spare production of Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece."

"It’s such a big machine of a play that it takes a while for the wheels to start moving, but once the initial creaks and jerks are out of the way, it’s an unrelenting plummet."

"Cox makes Tyrone a tyrant, barking and roaring, flaring into rage at the slightest provocation, simmering down just as quickly, and all the while his family don’t pay him the slightest bit of notice. He rages, Lear-like, impotently, and just as quickly he becomes a tender husband, staring with deep love into his wife’s eyes."

"Clarkson, meanwhile, has an extraordinary ability to flitter in and out of reality, sometimes just with her eyes... You can’t keep your eyes off those two."

"By no means is this a perfect production. The stripped-back approach is really exposing, and there are moments when it doesn’t bear up to the scrutiny... What it is, though, is very impressive, often mesmerising and – when it hits right – really profoundly moving."

"Brian Cox stars in this tender take on Eugene O’Neill’s shattering masterpiece"

"... despite a superb supporting cast, I’d say Cox doesn’t quite nail the role of James Tyrone, the patriarch of a disintegrating family, heavily based on O’Neill’s own dad"

"Cox is decent, but I found his performance diffused by the production: director Jeremy Herrin takes a typically forgiving view of the Tyrones, which pays off elsewhere, but I think blunts Cox’s James"

"There‘s also another issue: fair or not, it’s hard to shake comparisons to Logan Roy - speaking in the same fruity brogue and in a role that’s very much about a father attempting to relate to his troubled sons who he himself has fucked up, there’s just something a bit… unhelpful about the resonance."

"The warmer, more-generous-than-usual direction finds its best outlet in a superlative turn from US actor Patricia Clarkson as James’s wife Mary."

"Still, I’d like to see a bit more daring than a tweak to the acting next time this play is revived. This is the third ‘Long Day’s Journey’ to hit the West End in 12 years, and none have exactly been formally wild."

"Brian Cox and, especially, Patricia Clarkson shine as dysfunctional parents in Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play"

"Jeremy Herrin’s production is careful, slowly gathering – and three-and-a-half hours long. The opening scenes are muted, not so much anguished as anxious"

"The great sound of the foghorn out at sea – the key note of a family adrift – is no more than a spectral whisper and the dialogue often falters; when power does switch on, it is at first in the monologues."

"Louisa Harland, of Derry Girls, who was so strong recently in Ulster American, shines as the maid who sees the truth and laughs in its face."

"Brian Cox, in braces and shirt sleeves, is strong and bluff, good on the hints of the old ham, yet too quick to fire up from the start"

"Yet Patricia Clarkson brings exceptional subtlety to the role of the mother: lost, manipulative, lying. Delicately vague, she suddenly flashes into vehemence."

"Brian Cox upstaged by Patricia Clarkson’s morphine fiend"

"Cox is thrilling as an overbearing patriarch but it’s Clarkson who steals the show in Eugene O’Neill’s agonising family drama"

"... Cox is, as always, thrilling to watch. Yet it is Patricia Clarkson as his “morphine fiend” of a wife, just returned from a sanatorium and tumbling back into addiction, who steals the show. Clarkson exudes vulnerability along with hard denial. For all the play’s period elements – it is set in 1912 – hers feels like a true, infuriating, compassionate portrait of an addict."

"Under Jeremy Herrin’s direction, the production does not seek to leaven the drama’s gloomy spirit: it is a long, talking play with little action delicately well-crafted which slides between domestic exchange and accusation, anger, emotional conflagration."

"Louisa Harland, for her part, is so effective as the family maid, Cathleen, that you want more of her. She lifts every scene she is in, turning a functional role into a comic highlight."

"At three and a half hours it feels withering. Then again, that is the point here. This is the ultimate family reckoning, with some light, but mostly shade."

"Brian Cox is out-acted by Patricia Clarkson"

"This production of Eugene O’Neill’s unflinching modern classic feels every one of its three-and-a-half hours"

"The almost three-and-a-half hours of Jeremy Herrin’s production do weigh heavily, as the four members of the tormented Tyrone family, variously addicted to alcohol, drugs and self-delusion, each seek their own oblivion."

"Clarkson is magnificent, giving the performance of the evening, shaping Mary into a figure of almost ethereal radiance, present but also absent."

"As James revisits childhood demons, Cox struggles to shift register sufficiently and convinces us a little less of the weight of the wounds he bears, especially in comparison to Clarkson’s deep mining of truth. That magnetic performer Kynaston beautifully captures young Edmund’s early-onset nihilism and aura of wasted potential, as the spectre of serious illness from tuberculosis looms."

"All focus is on O’Neill’s mighty words about human fallibility, of how other people’s flaws and weaknesses always appear so much easier to fix than our own unquiet souls."

"Brian Cox puts in the work but it’s a tough job"

"A work as dark and forbidding as this needs an actor with Brian Cox’s brooding presence. The veteran... steps up to the challenge of playing the flawed, self- pitying patriarch in Eugene O’Neill’s sprawling autobiographical play."

"Cox, better known now as the media baron Logan Roy, is the dominant figure in a workmanlike venture, directed by Jeremy Herrin, which, at times, really does feel like it’s wending its way towards the witching hour and beyond. By turns stern and maudlin, Cox is always watchable, but he’s still not able to prevent long-winded confrontations and confessions from slipping into melodrama."

"Gruelling stuff, yes, and Herrin’s prosaic approach doesn’t supply much in the way of light and shade. Lizzie Clachan’s austere set design offers little to please the eye, either."

"... Laurie Kynaston gets to the heart of the ailing Edmund, based on O’Neill himself"

"The American actress Patricia Clarkson has the trickiest task of all as Mary... The final scene, where Mary delivers a crushingly poignant speech, is desperately moving. But it’s a long time a-coming."

"Patricia Clarkson Illuminates an Uneven West End Production"

"The job of the conductor — or, rather, the director — is to weave and build the sound to maximum dramatic effect. Led by Brian Cox (“Succession”) and Patricia Clarkson, Jeremy Herrin’s West End cast of soloists is definitely strong. Overall, however, his production doesn’t fully sustain the tricky balancing act."

"The consumption killing Kynaston’s nicely considered Edmund is, mercifully, underplayed. He gently indicates sadness without overstating it and in the final showdown with his father, his self-possession works in balance to his father’s chaos. But elsewhere, like most of the characters in this production except Louisa Harland’s beautifully judged, knowing maid, he seems too isolated, as if playing the end of the play from the beginning."

"Herrin knows about secrets and lies in dramas of addiction, having directed Duncan MacMillan’s scorching, award-winning “People, Places, Things.” Here, his pacing of Clarkson’s performance is the strongest line through this production. His handling of her final moments, ultimately placing her calmly sitting on the edge of the stage, is masterly."

"The cumulative power of a still horribly recognizable journey through desperate, misplaced hope has ensured the longevity of O’Neill’s drama. Despite the unevenness of this production, Clarkson’s tender glow keeps it alive."