A long day’s journey into the night looms on stage: rough, heavy-footed, a creature of the last century. Still braying prophetic. Eugene O’Neill wrote the piece between 1939 and 1941 as an act of “old sorrow, written in tears and blood”. He did not want to have it performed, but his third wife, against his wishes, gave permission for a posthumous production in 1956. The raw autobiographical work depicts a mother addicted to morphine, a father entranced by memories of himself as a classic actor, a tuberculosis and an alcoholic son; the pain of it can be measured by the fact that a dead baby is named Eugene. It also produces an unforgettable image of an American mother: a ‘dope fiend’ in a rocking chair.
Jeremy Herrin’s production is careful, starts slowly and lasts three and a half hours. The opening scenes are muted, not so much anguished as anxious; Lizzie Clachan’s navy shingle design is austere and limited. The tremendous sound of the foghorn at sea – the keynote of a family adrift – is little more than a ghostly whisper and the dialogue often stutters; when the power is turned on, it is first in the monologues. Solo confessions drive the piece, but they gain intensity with a greater sense of family – of inherited and inescapable dysfunction – than here. The wounds look serious and not – as they should – fatal.
But oh, the sheer power of writing and acting: what other playwright could have come up with the description of “fog people” for characters so far removed from reality and from each other, and dreaming so hazily about the past? Laurie Kynaston and Daryl McCormack spar convincingly as the two uncomfortably fond brothers. Louisa Harland, van Derry girlswho was so strong recently Ulster-American, shines like the girl who sees the truth and laughs at it. Yet the core of the drama lies with the parents. Brian Cox, in suspenders and shirt sleeves, is strong and bluff, good at the hints of the old ham, yet too fast to hurry from the start: his own journey seems insufficiently long, and the echoes of his Succession role too clear (there’s even a rule about being stuck in a familiar role). Yet Patricia Clarkson brings exceptional subtlety to the role of the mother: lost, manipulative, lying. Delicately vague, it suddenly flashes into intensity. She provides a heartbreaking moment at the end of the play, which O’Neill considered “the best scene I’ve ever written”. To deliver the final line – a moment of dreamy radiance – she sits on the edge of the stage and swings her legs up. It’s like she’s young again.
Harold Pinter wrote The lover And The collection for television, early 1960s. They may have been written as a contrast to O’Neill’s drama. Short, stripped of explanation, driven by sharp conversations and not monologues, they teasingly offer an argument for being somewhat bewildered in the theater.
Sex games are what mostly happens. Not like pampas grass and blow-up dolls (although some tom-tom drums are strangely suggestive). This is the winking and teasing, the joyful encouragement and the crushing disappointment that couples do to each other, not just to get up for bedtime, but to figure out who they are.
These are more than historical pieces, but Lindsay Posner directs with an eye to a perfect reconstruction of the era. Rightly so, because Pinter’s intrigues are known for their verbal tightness, but are also littered with visual cues: a pair of high heels to give away is crucial. The opening line of the evening – “Is your loved one coming today?” – depends for its effect on being torpedoed in a most respectable sitting room. Peter McKintosh’s sets and costumes are impeccable. In The lover a couple playing doubles has a bench with two headrests and two cigarette boxes. In The collection Claudie Blakley is – somewhat better in terms of disguises – a fashion designer, in Mary Quantish bob and geometric printed tunic. There are accents of Hockney in a vase of tulips.
Blakley uses the characteristic rasp of her voice like a cat’s tongue: caressing but not smooth. She’s also excellent in what you might call the Angela Rayner moment, when she crosses her legs and makes the entire audience believe they can hear the strain of her stockings. Mathew Horne van Gavin and Stacey (“Gavin’s in!” an excited woman screamed on her phone outside the theater) is also very good: flat, unreadably blank. And David Morrissey takes on a daring new register. He arrives in a three-piece suit and speaks as if his words, too, were a vest; the smile on his face could be that of a newscaster exuding calm as he is about to announce a catastrophe. His body slowly collapses in bewilderment. With jokes along the way. With Pinter there is less threat than usual: here the playwright brings spring into enigma.
April De Angelis, author of the lively book thirty years ago Playhouse creatures about 17th century English actresses, Sarah Siddons has turned to another rich theatrical subject for her new play, The Divine Mrs. S. Painted by Joshua Reynolds as the tragic muse in 1784, and according to William Hazlitt to inspire not so much admiration as wonder, Siddons was an innovative artist and a celebrity caught in the snare of a working mother at a time when actresses routinely were grabbed by hand. by their bosses, and women who resisted kindness were declared crazy. What time could that have been?
The casting of Rachael Stirling as Siddons sets Anna Mackmin’s whimsical production ablaze. Stirling draws the audience towards him without becoming clammy. Her humor is instinctive, not only in the delivery of lines, but also in the way she holds herself and moves, in a graceful spiral. It’s difficult for her to demonstrate the new naturalism of Siddons’ acting, which looks less effortless in the age of television mumbling and shaking, but was a striking contrast to the ritualistic 18th-century style that Dominic Rowan demonstrated with panache. As Siddon’s brother, John Philip Kemble, a theater manager and actor, Rowan yodels his vowels and, with legs straight and arms raised, looks as if he’s locked in a perpetual fencing match.
Despite enjoyable episodes of backstage buoyancy, De Angelis’ investigation can all too often be heard trailing heavily behind the action. The poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) is in danger of being lost amid the swirl of women’s disappointments, commemorated with a plaque at the theatre. Convincingly presented as deprived of mere acclaim as an ‘edgy’ (De Angelis cleverly runs around with anachronisms) playwright, Baillie is the most interesting character on stage. Incarnated by Eva Feiler with a fascinating, concentrated intensity, her body seems only a provisional receptacle for the words that must burst out of her.
Star ratings (out of five)
A long day’s journey into the night ★★★
The lover/the collection ★★★★
The Divine Mrs. S ★★★