Long Day's Journey Into Night (Brian Cox) - Wyndham’s 2024

I’m going to say I’m actually really pleased by this. I was so excited by the prospect of seeing Alex Lawther and was very disappointed to read he’d pulled out. I was optimistic looking at this thread about Anthony Boyle as I wasn’t familiar with his work. But Laurie Kynaston is excellent news in my eyes and I’m now so glad I got a ticket. Love all 4 actors again

I’m in tonight, completely forgot it was the first show. Will report back.

I was in for the first preview tonight, finished at 10:30 (give or take a couple of minutes), so running 3:30 at the moment, with the 7pm start.

This might be potentially a little too long for a work night, but nonetheless a play worthy of the “classic” status it has been given, with performances to boot. All 5 cast members made me completely forget tonight was the first preview.

It is long, but I’m glad I’ve ticked it off my list (although the casting would have to be very starry for me to see this again any time soon). Probably a star for every hour (and the half) if I had to rate it.

Brian Cox was on the radio this morning promoting this and it's convinced me to buy a ticket, even if the run time is a bit daunting! Tempted by the front row seats - to those who were there tonight, does the stage look particularly high?

Good to know! The run time is what concerns me. Might hold off booking for now and see if their day seats are an option. If not, might have to just risk front row anyway!

Thank you.

If anyone has a programme could you post who the understudies are.

Saw it tonight, and thought it was great.

Patricia Clarkson is an astonishing actress, and central to everything and everyone, but all the superb actors get their moments.

The show finished at 10:25pm, so the running time is a long 3 hours and 25 minutes, including an interval, but it didn't feel like it because the play becomes exponentially more involving as time progresses.

Some spoilers follow. . .

With Patricia Clarkson in the play, and her role so pivotal, it really is like she is the sun and the other actors are in orbit around her.

I didn't find the play quite so Mary-centric when I've seen it before (with Lesley Manville and Laurie Metcalf).

The play is so well named, taking place over one long day, starting in the morning and ending in the night, and since night is when inhibitions are generally at their lowest, it is in the second half that the play really soars.

Similarly, a great irony of the play is that the more drinks the characters have, the more entertaining the play, because it opens them all up, even though drink is one of the things destroying them.

Even Cathleen, the family maid, played by Louisa Harland (so brilliant in "Ulster American") gets a great scene with the demon drink (the only one with a significant amount of humour, rare and welcome in this dark play).

Laurie Kynaston, playing the unwell younger son, smouldered like Montgomery Clift, a living ghost existing in a state of heightened awareness and perpetual distress.

As the older son, Daryl McCormack is like embers, generally subdued but constantly threatening to come alive when the dramatic wind blows, and when it does, he's fire.

As the patriarch of the family, something about Brian Cox's dreamy storytelling in "The Weir" at the Donmar remains, but now the dreams are no longer wonders but obfuscations, and as his assertive exterior deflates over the course of the play, he movingly comes more and more to resemble Munch's "The Scream," open-mouthed despair personified.

But it is Clarkson's moment-to-moment aliveness, and emotional quality of unstable-ness, like a nuclear reaction, veering from smiling resting face to determined plotter to living in the past (like Blanche Dubois) to genuine expressions of love to disingenuousness to despair to cruelty to self-hatred, all turning on a dime, one emotion flowing into the next, that is so involving and so brilliant.

From a start that was a little cold for me, I found myself heated up to a full 4 and a half stars of rapt involvement by play's end.

The full text plays for 4hrs including an interval so it sounds like they’ve already taken 30 minutes out of it.

Reviews seem to be a mixture of 3 and 4 stars.

I enjoyed it very much on the whole -Patricia Clarkson was so clear, so sharp that you can't take your eyes off her and the play has real dramatic energy when shes there (and after having just seen Dorian Gray and Opening Night ah for the simplicity of real dramatic magnetism on the stage without bells and whistles). The problem being in the second half (hard to describe it in terms of acts in this form) it does grind to a halt a bit when she's not present and some of it doesn't engage. There was a wide standing ovation and Cox/Clarkson were certainly worthy.

Today's matinee.

The play: great.

Brian Cox: good, but not great.

The sons: ditto

The maid: ditto

The direction: ditto

The lighting: crepuscular

The set: why did Lizzie Clachan set it in an Ole and Steen dining room?

Patricia Clarkson: sublime, heartbreaking, devastating, a must-see.

Anyone stage door-ed?