Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson. Photo by Johan Persson.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill – Wyndham’s Theatre, London

Eugene O’Neill’s most famous and successful play has a reputation as a gruelling watch, spanning nearly three and a half hours, and tracking the misery inherent in a family which closely resembles that of the author. But the best stage actors cannot keep away, drawn by two leads that are among the best parts available. The latest in the long line are Brian Cox as James Tyrone and Patricia Clarkson as Mary Tyrone, who are not an intuitive pairing but turn out to be brilliant. Jeremy Herrin’s production is set in a empty New England holiday let designed by Lizzie Clachan, which has never provided the home Mary has sought all her life. Cox’s plays James as a bear of a man, full of the actor’s charisma that drew Mary to him when she was young, but also of desperation, which breaks through when he picks up a whisky glass. He commands the stage with an actorly presence which carries echoes of Olivier, one of whose last great stage performances this was. Tyrone’s failure to play the great roles he craved, having settled for the easy money, also carries interesting echoes when spoken by Cox, whose career has veered away from the stage.

Tyrone is the still-living embodiment of a dead actorly tradition, but his wife Mary is a ghost. Addicted to morphine, she has been pushed into the background by the demands of her husband’s touring life, her own life subsumed. Patricia Clarkson is simply brilliant in the role, giving Mary a directness and realism that chills and moves. The play’s final scenes, where she describes the religious vocation she gave up to marry Tyrone, is a remarkable climax. The play’s other characters include the couple’s sons – alcoholic Jamie (Daryl McCormack) and Edmund (Laurie Kynaston), ill with tuberculosis. Jamie hovers on the brink of self-destruction, barely in denial any more, although McCormack’s portrayal sometimes lacks the unpredictable edge the character needs. As Edmund, Kynaston is vulnerable and angry. Louisa Harland sparkles in the small part of the maid, Cathleen, who she fleshes into an unmistakable character in her few scenes.

O’Neill’s play is by no means perfect – some suspension of disbelief is needed to take these people at face value – but it is fascinatingly bravura writing, which fuses the personal and the political in the tradition of Ibsen (who O’Neill acknowledges in an aside). Long Day’s Journey raises issue which, shocking in the 1950s, remain current – women’s control over their lives, the US medical system, opiates, depression, failure and families. Herrin’s production is an excellent account.