The Emmy, Golden Globe and Olivier award-winning actor Brian Cox, makes his return to the London stage in Spring 2024 starring in Long Day’s Journey Into Night.
Often regarded as the greatest American play of the 20th Century, this landmark new production will be helmed by award-winning director Jeremy Herrin.
O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play depicts a summer day in the life of the Tyrones, closely based on O’Neill’s own chaotically dysfunctional family. Deeply moving and uplifting in equal measure, it’s a compelling story of love, hate, betrayal and addiction and the impossible fragility of family bonds.
Following his recent acclaimed production of Best of Enemies, Jeremy Herrin’s new production will bring into sharp focus the universality of Eugene O’Neill’s beautifully crafted characters and language, to create an unmissable theatrical event.
__Access Performances__
Captioned Performance - Tuesday 7th May 2024
Audio Described Performance - Tuesday 14th May 2024
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, especially in the whisky-heavy later scenes. You miss the heft, too, when neither Cox nor Clarkson are on stage – less a criticism of the sons than a testament to the hypnotic skill of the parents – and some scenes in the second half feel really bum-numbingly long. And it’s not exactly an enjoyable night out at the theatre either. What it is, though, is very impressive, often mesmerising and – when it hits right – really profoundly moving.
A serene smile battling with tiny nervous gestures, her eyes increasingly somnolent and vague as the drug kicks in, Clarkson is shattering. Cox’s James combines an ox-like bulk and power with the silver-haired, self-conscious elegance of an old stager. We see flashes of the saloon-bar raconteur and when he hits the whiskey his face acquires a devilish distortion of mingled glee and pain – yet he’s devastating, too, in the final scenes, tenderly cradling his wife’s wedding dress while Mary is lost in reverie.
2024 | West End |
West End |
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