life with more cowbell

You know what? It’s okay to laugh during a Eugene O’Neill play. Sure, the themes of family dysfunction, addiction and despair are emotionally taxing – for the actors and the audience – but it’s not all grim and gloom. There are some genuine giggles to be had – and not all of them on the darker side of funny.

That was a happy surprise for me as I watched Soulpepper’s production of A Long Day’s Journey Into Night last night – it’s long, it’s intense and the occasional bit of comic relief was most welcome, the laughter like a communal exhalation, the entire audience dropping their shoulders, minds relaxing if only for a moment.

Director Diane Leblanc has a lovely cast for this production: Evan Buliung, Nancy Palk, Krystin Pellerin, Gregory Prest and Joseph Ziegler. Real-life husband and wife Palk and Ziegler play Mary and James Tyrone – she a wife, mother and morphine addict, and he a once great actor turned land- and money-grabbing miser, given into fear of ending up in the poorhouse. Their eldest son Jamie (Buliung) is a disappointing wild child, while their youngest Edmund (Prest) is favoured and in ill-health. All three men are alcoholics. The adorably cheeky maid Cathleen (Pellerin) knows the family well enough on a day-to-day level, but is seemingly unaware of the darker family dynamic at work in the house.

Long Day’s Journey is a deeply tragic autobiographical play – and O’Neill had wanted it kept under lock and key until 25 years after his death, but his widow opened it early. An Irish Catholic tragedy of isolation, addiction, despair and desperation – the Tyrones are his family, including himself. It’s a long, challenging play for both actors and audience, but the cruelty of the family’s substance-addled battles are softened by moments of comic relief and even tenderness. Cruel to be kind, you always hurt the one you love. My favourite scenes are the two-handers: Mary inviting Cathleen to sit down for a drop of whiskey, relating the tale of how she and James met; Edmund and James drinking and playing cards, with James revealing the desperately impoverished childhood that is the source of his miserly ways; the two brothers, Jamie drunkenly returned from the whorehouse, confessing evil intentions and ill-will towards his baby brother – but with a love and tenderness that belies his callousness.

Lovely design work from Peter Hartwell (set and costumes), Steven Hawkins (lighting) and John Gzowski (sound). Like the Tyrones themselves, the family’s summer home is neglected and worn out – a house, but not a home – the upstairs windows suspended from the flies, as if floating, and the centre upstairs room with the small table lamp is particularly foreboding. The lighting is frugally dim, on James’s orders, and the mist of the fog rolling in, with the accompanying sounds of fog horn and bell adding to the sense of isolation. Everything about this family and this place is haunting.

This is a play that stays with you.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night continues its run at the Young Centre in the Distillery. Check the Soulpepper website for details and reservations: http://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/12_season/long_day%27s_journey_into_night.aspx