Today we went to see Long Day’s Journey into Night. It was a beautiful play that shows the horror of addiction and strife it can bring to a family, along with other societal issues. This play was hard to watch. The Mother portrayed addiction and the mental state of self hatred and deflection amazingly well. The set was nice but I wish we had gotten a better view of the fog as its such an important characteristic of the play demonstrating the progression and hold of addiction over the mother. As it was we got a very small amount of fog in the center of the house which wasn’t the best place as it would have made much more sense and would have been more effective to prevent the fog at the front door. They could have used so much more fog and maybe even had a fog wall but oh well. The rest of the set was very nice and worked far better for their performance than I had originally thought it was going to when I sat down. The costumes were nice and the lighting was very efficient and well used. Though for the most part I thought the acting was very compelling especially after intermission. The older brother had seemed very stiff in the beginning but after intermission he really upped his game towards the end of the play. The Father was my favorite though I really enjoyed and empathized with his performance. With the acting put aside I can say that this is a hard play to like and I probably won’t see it again. It’s a very long play that drags on and on. If you’re a big theater watcher then I recommend it for the experience, but if you just want to enjoy your time then go see Boys of the Blackstuff and have a much more entertaining night.
Theatre in London U of A 