Many of Eugene O’Neill’s characters cemented his position as America’s first serious dramatist, a writer who could fuse psychological realism with poetry. But none did it better than Mary Tyrone, the famous matriarch of O’Neill’s masterpiece “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”
In the current production at Arena Stage, Mary is played by Helen Carey, who is doing the play in part because it’s directed by Robin Phillips. “He’s incredibly familiar with the play,” said Carey. “He knows how he wants it to flow, who’s in the foreground, how the interplay of the characters works.”
Written in 1942 about a single day in 1912, “Long Day’s Journey” is one of O’Neill’s best known and most autobiographical plays. It takes place in Connecticut in a summer house very much like the home the O’Neill family owned in New London.
| Onstage | |
| ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ | |
| Where: Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW | |
| When: Through May 6 | |
| Info: $40 to $85, 202-488-3300; arenastage.org | |
The Tyrone family includes: a father, James, who is an actor; the mother, Mary; a 33-year-old son named Jamie; and a 23-year-old son, Edmund. The men are all alcoholics; Mary is a recovering morphine addict. As the play progresses, the characters confront their own demons and self-delusions before achieving a measure of compassion. Throughout, Mary’s role is a challenging one, involving massive mood swings and expressions of conflicting emotions.
The arc of “Long Day’s Journey” begins on a happy note, with Mary just returned from a sanitarium, apparently cured of her addiction.
“Robin pointed out something interesting,” said Carey. “The major concern of the play overall is a mother’s dysfunction. But at the beginning of the play, all the concern is about Edmund’s ‘summer cold.’ That takes precedence over everything else. Mom is perfectly fine. At least they don’t want to believe anything else.”
Carey has been asked to perform in other productions of “Long Day’s Journey” over the years but has fled from them. “It’s so easy to do a superficial examination of the play,” she explained. “But Robin has managed to bring all the elements into a symphony where you hear all the instruments. You say, ‘I had no idea this person had a legitimate gripe.’ Or you understand the myopic concerns of the men, you see why this woman is falling through the cracks.”
One reason this “Long Day’s Journey” is so intense, according to Carey, is that the original text has been streamlined. “It moves,” said Carey. “The arguments are crisp, and there is a good bit of overlapping, of people talking over each other, as people do in real life, and that gives the play a vibrancy and immediacy.”
“I suspect people think they know this play. My suspicion is that they will meet something quite different from what they thought they were going to meet.”
