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Synopsis
David Suchet returns to the West Endin Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer prize-winning masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night, one of the greatest American plays written in the 20th century.
Set in 1912. Following the Tyrone family through a mesmerising day and night, as they battle their demons, their pasts, and one another the play depicts the struggle for survival of each family member as they threaten to drift further into oblivion.
David Suchet won both aWhatsonstage.com and Critics’ Circle Awards for Best Actor for his most recent West End role in All My Sons. His other recent West End appearances include The Last Confession at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket and Man and Boy at the Duchess Theatre. His extensive stage credits also include appearances at the National and with the RSC. On TV, he is best known for playing the title role in the series Poirot.
Laurie Metcalf was last seen on the London stage at the National Theatre in All My Sons in 2001 and on Broadway in Brighton Beach Memoirs in 2009. She is best known for playing Jackie Harris on TV's Roseanne, for which she is a three-time Emmy Award winner. Other TV roles include The Big Bang Theory, Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. Film credits include the voice of Andy's Mum throughout Pixar's Toy Story trilogy as well as appearances in Scream 2 and Desperately Seeking Susan.
David Suchet & Laurie Metcalf. Photo credit: Johan Persson
Date: 11 April 2012
Following his astonishing success two years ago in All My Sons, David Suchet returned to the Apollo theatre last night (10 April 2012, previews from 2 April) in another classic American play.
The play is based on the author's own family. James Tyrone (Suchet) is a once-respected classical actor who sold out for commercial success and now seeks solace in alcohol. His wife Mary (Chicago Steppenwolf veteran and Roseanne co-star Laurie Metcalf) is a morphine addict thanks to the interventions of a quack doctor when she was giving birth.
Over the course of one day the play explores the relationships between them and their sons, failed actor James Tyrone Jr (Trevor White) and poet and sea-voyager, Edmund (Kyle Soller). Rosie Sansom plays the "summer maid" Cathleen.
"David Suchet puts even further distance between himself and Hercule Poirot with this beautifully modulated version of Eugene O'Neill's James Tyrone in the mother of all dysfunctional family dramas Long Day's Journey into Night ... All four actors skirt round some astute editing and maintain the same sort of blistering pace that Jonathan Miller achieved in his revival starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey at the Haymarket a quarter of a century ago. Suchet harks back even further to Laurence Olivier's National Theatre performance but resists Olivier's barking swagger, playing a much more broken, accommodating figure with odd flashes of the commanding Shakespearean; his theatrical heyday is a fading memory, not so much a defiant recreation, as it was with Olivier ... Laurie Metcalf is brilliant throughout despite the handicap of a terrible Wurzel Gummidge white wig at the end (why do they do this?) ... It is an immensely sad and touching performance which keeps this most personal and tragic of great American plays, as it is throughout, on just the right side of a debilitating pathos. A triumphant evening."
"This superb revival of Eugene O'Neill's masterpiece has everything you could ask for in a drama: powerhouse performances, delicacy, great writing – and a tragic personal backstory ... David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf... are exceptional as the father and mother, James and Mary Tyrone. Suchet, his head held high and his voice full of Irish-American gravel, gives a profoundly sympathetic portrait based explicitly on O'Neill's father James ... Suchet shows the actor's thespian dignity and his generous tenderness for his wife ... Metcalf, by contrast, gives a completely unsentimental portrayal of Mary (which is) unsparing: her grace, elegance and faded beauty make it even more horrible when she pours out sweet poison under the influence of the drug, berating her sons for being born and dragging them down into her fog... This beautifully acted revival sends you into the night elated, with the sense of something understood."
[wos_qu@te]#even the way Suchet uses a light switch or attends to a broken shoelace feels pregnant with significance#[/wos_qu@te]"Anyone who admires great acting will savour the performances of David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf in this potent revival of Eugene O'Neill's shattering tragedy. Suchet is Irish-born patriarch James Tyrone … Frequently dueling with his two sons Jamie and Edmund, he's both soldierly and pathetic. It's a performance full of telling detail … James is often expansive in his gestures. But he can be miserly, as well as torn between the need to preserve his dignity and show how much he cares about his ailing wife Mary. She is portrayed with stunning conviction by Metcalf … She conveys with delicate precision yet also humanity and passion the travails of a woman long ago scarred by the loss of a child ... The moments of fervent confrontation are skilfully realised. So are the bursts of comedy ... The result is moving. It's about as far away as you can imagine from a perky night out in the West End, but deeply courageous in its account of O'Neill's anguished vision."
"At the end of this superb production of Eugene O'Neill's harrowing autobiographical play, I barely had the strength to get out of my seat. The dramatic impact is shattering. The raw pain, passion and even the occasional clumsiness of the writing are testament to a work of heroic honesty ... As the anguished, tight-fisted father, David Suchet gives a performance of high-definition intensity, suddenly seeming physically diminished as expansive hope gives way to bitter despair ... The passage in which he describes his dirt-poor childhood, which in part, at least, explains the meanness with money that possibly caused his wife's addiction, and certainly explains his sell-out career, is overpoweringly moving ... Laurie Metcalf is equally remarkable as his wife, floating around the stage like a distracted ghost ... Meanwhile, Kyle Soller movingly captures the passion, fear and vulnerability of the young playwright, while Trevor White brings a terrifying, self-loathing viciousness to his brother, Jamie. This is a masterly production of a masterpiece. It isn't easy to sit through, but the dramatic rewards are enormous."
Libby Purves The Times ★★★★
"Suchet deploys a brilliant mastery of the text's crazy pendulum-swings from affability to rage, kidding himself that his beloved wife is cured of addiction, or ranting about his sons not knowing 'the value of a dollar and the fear of the poorhouse' before abruptly lavishing drink money on them … The same erratic mood afflicts his sons, particularly the invalidish, spiritual Edmund, wonderfully played by Kyle Soller ... Perhaps the most brilliant of all is Laurie Metcalf as the wife and mother who, during a day that begins in placid sunshine, returns to the drug. At first in ladylike denial about her 'medicine', she declines into delusion, paranoia, pathos, and unwelcome bursts of frankness. Yet all the time her underlying humanity and historic griefs show through. Anthony Page, the director, did well to keep in far more of her lines intact than other adaptations: she, as much as Suchet, is the core of this remarkable evening."
"What Anthony Page's production brings out beautifully is the tortured love under the endless chain of accusation and counter-accusation. Suchet has all the qualities one looks for in James: the vocal resonance, the poker-backed bearing, the self-conscious dignity of a man who brought a Shakespearean technique to crowd-pleasing melodrama. He also conveys the miserliness in one brilliantly inventive touch … But, above all, Suchet highlights James's forlorn passion for his wife: when he tells her 'it is you who are leaving us', his voice is filled with a sorrowful resignation that stops the heart. The Chicago-based Laurie Metcalf, last seen in London in a National Theatre production of All My Sons, is even more of a revelation. She steadfastly refuses to poeticise Mary, and instead charts, with infinite precision, the degrading progress of her drug dependence. Initially simulating a chirpy gaiety, she falls apart as the day proceeds, lapsing into violent mood swings and a stream of consciousness."
Quentin Letts Daily Mail ★★
"Why should we believe this (celebrated) dramatic portrait of a miserly, hard-drinking, moody ex-actor? Why should believe this temper tantrum Olympics, so remorselessly brittle from start to boozy end? Three of the five characters are alcoholics. One is a druggie. The fifth is a maid ... The big draw of this confident West End production is David Suchet, playing Tyrone, We are in Connecticut in 1912 but Mr Suchet is dressed and acts more like someone from the 1930s. Tyrone is first-generation Irish American. Mr Suchet plays him with a wobbly accent and expansive gestures - taps to the chest, shrugs, disbelieving eyebrows, wide-flung palms - which are more like cartoon Noo Yawker than an orotund grandee of the early 20th century stage, albeit one with psychological problems ... The second half becomes a tiresome drunk scene ... After three hours of O'Neill you may be in need of a stiff drink yourself."
Following his recent remarkable West End performances in Terence Rattigan's Man and Boy and Arthur Miller's All My Sons, David Suchet puts even further distance between himself and Hercule Poirot with this beautifully modulated version of Eugene O'Neill's James Tyrone in the mother of all dysfunctional family dramas Long Day's Journey into Night.
Suchet's Tyrone is the husk of a great actor, a skinflint who has sold his soul for one big commercial success; his attempts at preserving his self-esteem involve alcoholic delusion and the suffering of his wife, Mary Cavan Tyrone, a morphine addict since giving a difficult birth, and the uneasy bantering of his two grown sons, the failed actor James Tyrone Jr and the consumptive poet and sea-voyager, Edmund.
All four characters are close family portraits, Edmund of O'Neill himself. But it's the poisonous Irish Catholic atmosphere of guilt and retribution, whispered deceits and sudden accusatory lurches (with instant withdrawals and apologies) that Anthony Page's fleet and merciless production exposes so well.
It all takes place on one long day in August 1912 from sunlit morning till deep foggy night in the family summer house (designed by Lez Brotherston, beautifully lit by Mark Henderson) and speeds through in under three hours, the interval taken before the fourth fateful act.
You really do feel that these booze-fuelled arguments happen every day. It's as though the Tyrone family are trapped in their roles and that their domestic mythology is something they need as a communal fix, just as son number one needs to go whoring in town with “fat Violet” and son number two wallows in his “debauched” poets and the experience of pantheistic fulfilment on the sea.
These great speeches of the last act are superbly done by Trevor White as the fleshy James Jr and the bendy-limbed, stick thin Kyle Soller as Edmund. All four actors skirt round some astute editing and maintain the same sort of blistering pace that Jonathan Miller achieved in his revival starring Jack Lemmon and Kevin Spacey at the Haymarket a quarter of a century ago.
Suchet harks back even further to Laurence Olivier's National Theatre performance but resists Olivier's barking swagger, playing a much more broken, accommodating figure with odd flashes of the commanding Shakespearean; his theatrical heyday is a fading memory, not so much a defiant recreation, as it was with Olivier.
If the play belongs to anyone, it belongs to Mary, the convent girl who is drifting away from her family on jabs and sweet powders until her recurring lapses in the secrecy of her bedroom become a full blown “mad” scene. She appears, trailing her wedding dress, with an almost matter-of-fact inevitability, having paced around the upstairs bedroom like Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman.
The Chicago Steppenwolf veteran and Roseanne co-star Laurie Metcalf is brilliant throughout despite the handicap of a terrible Wurzel Gummidge white wig at the end (why do they do this?). She plays the text with a sort of neurasthenic rubato, forever darting ahead of herself into desperate gestures of appeasement while hovering over the abyss.
It is an immensely sad and touching performance which keeps this most personal and tragic of great American plays, as it is throughout, on just the right side of a debilitating pathos. A triumphant evening.
Meant to give this 5 stars. I saw this last night and was very impressed. It was gripping from start to finish. Both David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf were amazing! Very moving at the end. It's a shame that the entire upper circle was empty but I would definitely recommend this, it's a superb production. - Sam
28 Apr 12
I saw this last night and was very impressed. It was gripping from start to finish. Both David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf were amazing! Very moving at the end. It's a shame that the entire upper circle was empty but I would definitely recommend this, it's a superb production. - Sam
28 Apr 12
I can't say this is a favourite play of mine but I must give credit where it's due. There is some fine acting here from all the players. I loved Mark Henderson's lighting and Lez Brotherson's set too, they created just the right mood. I agree that the wig for Laurie Metcalf was a big mistake but despite that slight over melodramatic addition, she managed the part beautifully. David Suchet was excellent as usual. I found I liked lots of individual scenes in this production more than the play as a whole. If I had a criticism it would be that I didn't really feel for many of the characters as perhaps I should have done. Interesting to see productions like this on Shaftesbury Avenue though rather than at the subsidised houses. - Stuart
16 Apr 12
The first half is so relentlessly aggressive and downbeat, and the lurid description of Laurie Metcalf's mama as a "dope fiend" sounded so archaic, that I was a bit turned off. But in Act 2 things got a LOT more nuanced, and there is a wonderful lengthy conversation, beautifully acted, between David Suchet's James Tyrone and Kyle Soller's Edmund that is truly great. And the scenes that follow, featuring Trevor White and Laurie Metcalf are equally excellent. I ended up feeling I had seen some great theatre, not merely bludgeoned by an anti-drugs campaign (the feeling I got from Act 1). - steveatplays
15 Apr 12
The first half is so relentlessly aggressive and downbeat, and the lurid description of Laurie Metcalf's mama as a "dope fiend" sounded so archaic, that I was a bit turned off. But in Act 2 things got a LOT more nuanced, and there is a wonderful lengthy conversation, beautifully acted, between David Suchet's James Tyrone and Kyle Soller's Edmund that is truly great. And the scenes that follow, featuring Trevor White and Laurie Metcalf are equally excellent. I ended up feeling I had seen some great theatre, not merely bludgeoned by an anti-drugs campaign (the feeling I got from Act 1). - steveatplays
15 Apr 12
The first half is so relentlessly aggressive and downbeat, and the lurid description of Laurie Metcalf's mama as a "dope fiend" sounded so archaic, that I was a bit turned off. But in Act 2 things got a LOT more nuanced, and there is a wonderful lengthy conversation, beautifully acted, between David Suchet's James Tyrone and Kyle Soller's Edmund that is truly great. And the scenes that follow, featuring Trevor White and Laurie Metcalf are equally excellent. I ended up feeling I had seen some great theatre, not merely bludgeoned by an anti-drugs campaign (the feeling I got from Act 1). - steveatplays
15 Apr 12
Superb production of a great play, all of the acting is sublime but Laurie Metcalfe is especially impressive. Will be very surprised if this doesn't clean up at awards time! - ajh
11 Apr 12
I caught this play at Richmond before it's Transfer to the West End and thought it brilliant. After seeing Suchet in All my Sons, I was really looking forward to more powerful drama and this definitely had it. All My sons took many Stage awards/nominations and I think this play will do like wise. A great cast with David Suchet as always in top form and Laurie Metcalf very convincing and moving in her role. - Joe Spiteri
11 Apr 12
Kyle Soller IS American... - David T
24 Feb 12
I saw this production during its pre-West End run at the Richmond Theatre. Its success can be gauged by the full and rapt audience which erupted into enthusiastic cheers at the end. This is a 'wordy' play, to say the least, with its four main characters exchanging verbal blows like boxers, but it is never less than fascinating. David Suchet as the overbearing husband, James Tyrone, could be expected to be magnificent, as, indeed, he is (I feel the Olivier Award on the horizon), but the real revelation is the young and largely inexperienced Kyle Soller as the younger son, Edmund. Before looking at his biography in the programme, I had assumed he was American, so perfect was his accent, but he is British and RADA-trained. Trevor White as the elder son, Jamie, does not have quite the same authenticity, and has a tendency to ham it up a bit. Laurie Metcalf as the morphia-addicted wife, Mary, was very moving, portraying a mixture of fragility and denial with increasing desperation as the play proceeds. Anthony Page's direction is a triumph all round. A perfect evening in the theatre. - sc
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 and Laurie Metcalf (Mary Tyrone)_Credit Johan Persson150.jpg)
