Old sorrow remains fresh in 'Long Day's Journey'

Few writers have captured the nuanced pain, conflicted emotional ties and underlying love that make up family dysfunction with the perfect pitch that Eugene O'Neill displays in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." Despite the play being written more than half a century ago, Theatre in the Round's current production decisively demonstrates the timeless quality of this unflinching dissection of a tragic family.

O'Neill himself described the work as "this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood." "Long Day's Journey," which revolves around the fractured Tyrone family, was based closely on his own. James, the father, is a successful matinee idol and theater producer who remains obsessed with the poverty of his childhood. His wife, Mary, is a morphine addict, who uses the drug to dull her painful memories. Their children haven't escaped this familial swamp: Older son Jamie drowns his disillusionment in alcohol, while younger son Edmund has wandered far and wide in a hopeless attempt to escape his ghosts.

Director Lynn Musgrave has assembled a fine cast for this production and they ably communicate the web of love, disappointment and shared pain that entangles the Tyrones. Maggie Bearmon Pistner gives a masterful performance as Mary, deftly detailing her descent into a drug-induced fantasy world as the play progresses. Her Mary skates effortlessly between wistful romantic yearnings and bitter, knife-twisting cruelty as she struggles with her powerlessness over her addiction.

Rob Frankel is fairly restrained as the Tyrone patriarch, placing less emphasis on the character's flamboyance and more on his underlying resignation and impotent anger. Tom Sonnek infuses Jamie with bleak humor, while Wade A. Vaughn gives a sensitive performance in the difficult role of Edmund. The cast is rounded out by Rachel Finch as a naïve Irish maid. Michael Hoover's graceful set, complete with fog, evokes the summer cottage setting of this play. The mood is enhanced by Musgrave's evocative sound design.

If there's a flaw in this production, it's in its occasionally static pace. Musgrave has made cuts to the script, but the production nevertheless runs a good three and a half hours. The length is not so much the issue as the leisurely tempo, which tends to defuse some of the emotional tension of the play.

This is a solid and moving production of "Long Day's Journey Into Night" nonetheless, and it ably demonstrates the truth of Mary Tyrone's words: "The past is the present. It's the future, too."

Lisa Brock is a Minneapolis writer.