Post A Reply - Compilation of reviews for Ms. Lange and the production

[ArtMan]

Posted: 5/23/16 at 4:40pm

 double post

Updated On: 5/23/16 at 04:40 PM

[ArtMan]

Posted: 5/23/16 at 4:40pm

When I saw it they constantly made announcements advising you when the show would start, especially after the intermission.

[afterthesun]

Posted: 5/23/16 at 11:28am

Bandit, I saw a Sunday matinee performance, and I believe it started no later than 3:04. There is a sign posted in the lobby that says something to the effect of, "In order to get you home in a timely manner, the show will begin promptly at the listed performance time." I think they make every effort to start as on time as possible because of the longer running time.

[bandit964]

Posted: 5/23/16 at 11:13am

I enjoyed the show thoroughly and have nothing more to add that others haven't already said.

To me the 4th act was the only one that seemed to drag.  

Question:  Did the show start startlingly on-time??  I was rushing to use the restroom, but thought to myself, "well the show won't begin until 7:07/7:08 anyway.  Well darn it if they didn't start right at 7:02.  I wish all shows began on time, but I've never seen a show start so close to the printed time.  I was shocked.  Happy-shocked.  But there were LOTS of latecomers.  It took a good 20 minutes before the audience settled down.

[ArtMan]

Posted: 5/22/16 at 9:22pm

How some of you stated that the three hours plus goes by really fast, was certainly not my experience.  I couldn't wait for it to be over.  Plus it was absolutely freezing in the theater.  They had me for the first half.  But the second half just dragged for me.  The seats were uncomfortable.  The only time during the second half, that I had an interest, is when Jessica was on stage.  Also during the first half, some dope's cell phone rang twice.  With the play being so quiet, it was very noticable.

[AndrewAndrew]

Posted: 5/19/16 at 1:29pm

via @ReviewEquations:

{ [ (#Grey Gardens + Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf) x Morphine ] + #LadyDay - Music} = @RTC_NYC's #LongDaysJourney

[C4b2a3b]

Posted: 5/9/16 at 10:19pm

dev101 said: "Any of you who have seen the show; do you think I'd still have decent seats if I bought row L on house right? 

 

"

Unless your main objective is to see Jessica Lange, I think that orchestra house right will be just fine. It sounds like you're familiar with the problem of her playing to house left for a large portion of the play. Lange gives her final speech facing the audience at the center of the stage, for what it's worth. I hope that's not a spoiler... 

[Mark-Alexis]

Posted: 5/9/16 at 8:11pm

David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter: Led by a transfixing Jessica Lange...one of the more surprising aspects of the latest Broadway revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night, a play defined by its malignant sorrow, is the nervous laughter that often ripples through the audience...Much of the acrid humor that keeps bubbling up comes from Michael Shannon's dangerously unpredictable Jamie Tyrone, the unrepentantly cynical eldest son, a failed actor turned dissolute Broadway loafer. But the heat-seeking center of the production is Lange's morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone, a role she played previously in London 16 years ago. An edge-of-insanity electrical current runs through much of Lange's work, from her screen portrayals of Frances Farmer or the unhinged wife in Blue Sky through her association with the cracked heroines of Tennessee Williams to her career resurgence as the dotty Big Edie in Grey Gardens and the high priestess of witchy camp in the American Horror Story anthology (series creator Ryan Murphy is an associate producer here). It's that attraction to madness that gives this performance such mesmerizing authority. The production belongs to Lange, if only for the unsettling spell of her final monologue, when she winds back the years in her head to become a ghost of the convent school girl she once was, still untouched by life. Even when Mary is offstage, thumping around in the attic searching for her wedding gown, she's a vivid presence in the apprehensive glances that her family cast at the ceiling and staircase. Lange does remarkable things with her voice, chirping away in the early scenes with almost manic concentration to cover her need for a fix, or diving down a full octave to contemplate her arthritic hands with a gravelly chill: "How ugly they are. Who'd ever believe they were once beautiful?" A conflicted creature of wild inconsistencies, Mary craves the invisibility of the fog but at the same time dreads its aloneness. "The hardest thing to take is the blank wall she builds around her," says Edmund. Lange inhabits those unearthly spaces with fragility but also with the fierce narcissism and cunning of the addict, confessing her crippling weakness only to deny it angrily moments later, or to flip the guilt back onto her family as they look on, heartsick. Her final words are among the most famous closing lines in American drama: "Yes, I remember. I fell in love with James Tyrone and was so happy for a time." Lange's Mary has become oblivious to her husband and sons by then, and yet oddly sober, projecting a clarity that cuts like a knife.

Edward Rothstein, Wall Street Journal: Jessica Lange is the powerful incarnation of Eugene O'Neill's morphine-addicted matriarch. Jonathan Kent’s direction and Ms. Lange’s performance really did keep the character’s descent under choreographed control, the steepness of the incline measured by Ms. Lange’s restless hands, her mercurial temperament, her wraith-like presence. It is a portrayal that sustains the audience in rapt voyeuristic attention almost to the end of the 3 3/4-hour performance (with one intermission). She is even on our minds during much of the final act, when we hear the ghostly thumps of a haunted soul searching through old trunks in an unseen attic. Ms. Lange last took on this role in a much praised production on London’s West End in 2000, but reports of those performances suggest that here is a more finely calibrated ensemble.

Marilyn Stasio, Variety: The tenderness between Gabriel Byrne, in the towering role of the fading Broadway actor James Tyrone, and Jessica Lange, as his beloved but tormented wife Mary, brings welcome relief from the overall misery of Eugene O'Neill's semi-autographical masterwork, "Long Day's Journey Into Night." As staged by British director Jonathan Kent and acted by a cast that also includes Michael Shannon, the Roundabout Theater Company's outstanding revival has a lighter tone and softer edges that, paradoxically, impart a deeper sorrow onto this classic domestic tragedy. Lange maintains close control over the mounting hysteria that will eventually send Mary literally up to the attic and into the past to relive every painful chapter of her history. She brings both grace and gravity to Mary’s futile efforts to deny reality — and a certain ravaged beauty to her comforting memories of a past that never was.

Jesse Green, Vulture: Something highly unexpected [has] happened in the eleven years since Lange was last seen in New York: her voice opened up, not just in volume but in range and color. Either that or sound technology has improved to the point that it can now make a symphony from a lone instrument. In any case, the change has allowed Lange to harness her interpretive gifts and triumph in a new Long Day’s Journey, directed by Jonathan Kent for the Roundabout. Her Mary has a broader emotional palette than any I’ve seen, including that of Vanessa Redgrave, who made her Mary a harrowing wraith dying from the play’s first words. Lange situates the character more as O’Neill depicts her: at the beginning of a relapse, not at the end. She is still a coquette, not only in the moderately sunny opening, but also in flashes throughout, as she continues to wrestle with her illness. It’s the struggle that makes the tragedy; indeed, her descent is far more painful for the shy pride she takes in her apparent good health at the start, and for the pleasure of her brogue as it occasionally flirts out like a well-turned ankle from beneath her long skirts. As a result, when she eventually heads up the long, long stairs of Tom Pye’s set to the morphine vials in the spare bedroom upstairs, you feel every step’s disaster. The unexpected size of Lange’s portrayal seems to have surprised and upended the whole production.

Linda Winer, Newsday: The temptation is to talk all day and into the night about Jessica Lange as Mary Tyrone in "Long Day's Journey Into Night." It's hard not to dwell on the layers of hard-lived experience that appear and reappear, like a collage of time-lapsed photography, on her handsome face. It is equally difficult to resist trying to describe the vocal range that, scene upon tormented scene, roams astonishingly among the lilts of a smitten young convent girl and the frightening growls of a morphine-addicted woman whose illusions, like those of the three other haunted Tyrones, have been crushed....This really is, with perhaps one miscalculation, a stunning revival of this churning family exorcism. Gabriel Byrne has both the grating self-centeredness and a poignant, vain blindness as Mary's husband James...Michael Shannon...makes his towering height and lugubrious mask shatter with devastating, piteous rage as the confessions and the recriminations pile up. A problem, and it isn't a big one, is John Gallagher Jr., a fine actor whose portrayal of the sensitive, consumptive Edmund, O'Neill's alter-ego, feels a bit too contemporary for 1912. It is equally difficult to resist trying to describe the vocal range that, scene upon tormented scene, roams astonishingly among the lilts of a smitten young convent girl and the frightening growls of a morphine-addicted woman whose illusions, like those of the three other haunted Tyrones, have been crushed.

Jeremy Gerard, Deadline: And then there’s Lange. Mary, to whom the play is a testament but a mountain as well, regularly ascends the stairway to the “spare room” for a fix that’s never quite enough to allay her pain, nor enough to secure the illusion of happiness. Lange has the gift of Jane Greenwood’s diaphanous costumes and Natasha Katz’s exquisite lighting. She also has a delightful foil in Colby Minifie’s animated Cathleen, the maid. Over a mostly spectacular career, the two-time Oscar winner, who was nominated for the Olivier Award for this role, has made psychological complexity and transparency her hallmark, from the plays of O’Neill and Tennessee Williams to films including Frances, Cape Fear, Music Box and Country, to FX/s American Horror Story. With Lange leading the way, Mary begins this Journey a tragic figure and concludes it a ghost who will haunt our dreams, for a time.

Robert Hofler, The Wrap: Lange’s performance works against that openness to create Mary’s own desperate claustrophobia. It’s a big performance, but there’s nothing mechanical about it, especially the love that she projects back to Byrne. The great beauty of O’Neill’s play is its repetition. He captures the way families can be civil one moment and at one another’s throats the next. Under Jonathan Kent’s direction, Byrne and Lange handle those sharp changes in tone adeptly to create a mesmerizing dance of death.

Adam Feldman, Time Out NY: As the morphine-addicted Mary Tyrone in the latest Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's bitter masterwork, Long Days Journey Into Night, Jessica Lange brings stunning colors to the role of a woman clawing her way through fog. You can't take your eyes off her; it's a mesmeric performance...Lange's Mary is a desperate fighter, defensive and manipulative...By turns, she is loving, wistful, lonely, proud, vicious and confused -- but above all, she is an addict. In Jonathan Kent’s production, the other actors orbit around Lange’s blazing star turn in painfully believable patterns of resignation. ...Gabriel Byrne plays her husband, James, with striking weariness and restraint...As their dissolute oldest son, Jamie, the riveting Michael Shannon infuses his climactic drunk scene with acrid dark humor and reluctant, wounded tenderness toward his consumptive younger brother, Edmund (a willfully sincere John Gallagher Jr.).

Steven Suskin, The Huffington Post: What Jonathan Kent’s production has going for it, foremost, is a bravura performance by Jessica Lange. One expects that critic and audience reports will begin with encomiums for Ms. Lange. Deservedly so, likely followed by a Tony nomination next Tuesday morning. Lange—who first played this role in an unrelated 2000 production in London—is matched by Michael Shannon, as the wastrel brother Jamie. Shannon (Bug, Killer Joe and the recently opened “Elvis and Nixon”-) is one of those actors who seem incapable of giving a less-than-mesmerizing stage performance.

Elysa Gardner, USA Today: It's Lange's nuanced, quietly wrenching performance that anchors Roundabout Theatre Company's new revival (* * * out of four stars) of Eugene O'Neill's seminal dysfunctional-family drama...This staging, by British director Jonathan Kent, doesn't pack the emotional or theatrical wallop of its predecessor, but its bleak naturalism remains compelling...it's Lange who haunts us most. Having played Mary on the London stage 16 years ago, she returns to the part with an obvious and profound sense of empathy for this woman who is compared, more than once, to a ghost. Mary's world, outside the drug-induced hazes, is hardly a comforting place, but you'll leave it feeling very much alive.

Entertainment Weekly: At the center of the domestic storm is Jessica Lange, who played Mary during a 2000 run in London and has a masterful grasp of the character’s fragility — an intuitive strength after playing similar women in A Streetcar Named Desire and The Glass Menagerie - and...is wonderful in [this] revival. There is such confusion in Mary, such buried resentment, and Lange’s ability to portray a woman who is barely more than a ghost provides the story with enormous pathos.

Joe Dziemianowicz, New York Daily News: As the morphine-addicted Mary, Oscar-winner Jessica Lange maximizes her meaty role's potential. Lange is blessed with an expressive voice and uses it like a musical instrument -- soft and coquettish, warm and motherly, then barbed and brutal as if dredging words from a bottomless well of despair. From the get-go, her Mary is “on.” She walks backward to avoid eye contact with the men in her family. Her final scene, a drug-hazed dive back to her convent days, devastates. And when she’s not onstage, Lange is missed.

Robert Kahn, NBC New York: Lange was Olivier Award-nominated for this role 16 years ago on the West End. Byrne was Tony Award-nominated as Jamie Tyrone in 2000's Broadway "Moon for the Misbegotten." They know their O'Neill, and are suited to take us on the roller-coaster ride, set across one day that will prove a turning point in the lives of a troubled family. English theater director Jonathan Kent guides the simple and elegant, nearly 4-hour-long production...Leads Lange and Byrne share an effortless chemistry in which they are alternately tolerant of, and vile toward, one another -- but always easily relatable. That's quite an accomplishment when dealing with a piece of literature that drifts further away from naturalism as the the night wears on. Lange is magnetic as the family matriarch with no feeling of rootedness or sense of belonging, certainly not in the waterfront New England summer home the family complains is shoddily maintained. At the heart of her loss is the death of a child, Eugene, infected with measles when Jamie, as a young, sick boy, wandered into his room. Mary blames everyone for Eugene’s death, including herself. In Lange’s hands, the emotions seem sometimes spontaneous, and at others calculated to be wounding: “I blame only myself … I’ve always believed Jamie did it on purpose.” She makes sharp turns with the precision of a race-car driver.Lange still has the planes and proportions of her youthful beauty, but convinces us that she's a woman whose hands are gnarled, and whose grace and bloom have deserted her. In a different lifetime, Mary might have been a classical pianist, but she took up with James and his journeyman actor’s lifestyle, setting a singular path in motion. Lange, for one, seems so immersed that we feel as if we were watching some real Mary Tyrone, and not that marvelous performer we remember from "Frances," or for that matter, “Tootsie.”

Matt Windman, amNY: This is an extremely difficult play to pull off, relying on rich prose instead of overt action and featuring miserable characters basking in overwhelming despair. The performances here are exceptional all around, but the production is likely to grow smoother and more engrossing as the run continues...Lange's Mary is a performance of unmistakable stature and refined acting ability...Lange exhibits more dramatic control, emphasizing Mary's downward progression from denial and erratic mood swings into drug-induced euphoria. As James, Byrne shows vulnerability behind the miserly and defensive exterior.

Ben Brantley, The New York Times: A violent storm front has moved into the American Airlines Theater...it's Gabriel Byrne, Jessica Lange, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher Jr. who are providing the thunder and lightning...Yet you can't avoid the feeling that this tempestuous climate is artificially controlled...[Lange's] voice seesaws between soprano girlish affection and contralto hostility in a single sentence, and more than other Marys I've seen, she is endowed with a robust, uneasy sensuality. You can feel Ms. Lange giving her all to each of her big set pieces, but they often feel too exquisitely self-contained, like coloratura arias in an opera. Ms. Lange is often acting beautifully, but she is also often palpably acting. And her final soliloquy is stretched self-indulgently thin.

Alexis Soloski, Guardian: The close of the play has always belonged to Mary, but Lange gets hold of much of the rest of it, too. Her Mary, a part she first played in the West End in 2000, can seem sweet, flighty, frail, but there's an adamantine spine beneath that softness, one that's been built on need and hurt. When provoked, she can turn as vicious as any of the men and she knows how to make her words cut more cruelly and deeply.

Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune: Lange plays that drugged-up mother with courage. Her Mary Tyrone has fewer moments of lucidity than most, and too few moments when lucidity and the heebie-jeebies are duking it out before our eyes, but who nonetheless really goes to some dark spots. And there's nothing artificial about that state of her being. It is expressed with profundity and truth. And that, along with Shannon's unceasing attempts to unlock some of these scenes and spill out their devastating emotional content, is about the only truly successful aspect of this strangely marauding and meandering theatrical experience. Updated On: 5/9/16 at 08:11 PM

[dev101]

Posted: 5/9/16 at 7:47pm

Any of you who have seen the show; do you think I'd still have decent seats if I bought row L on house right? 

[BWAY_Rob]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 1:05pm

Clearly Brantley didn't like the production.  With the exception of reviews from Chicago and LA, all the others have been very strong, most citing Lange as giving an incredible performance.  The show is selling very well and the show and Lange have been recognized by all of the awards groups thus far.  Actually, given the praise for Lange, I think she is the front runner for the Tony.  I respect Brantley, I just disagree with some of his comments on this show. 

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 12:49pm

I agree with MysteriousGrowl.  One might agree with Brantley or not about this Long Day's Journey, but what about his review is dismissive of the production or the performances, let alone "completely dismissive"?

Have we gotten to the point where any mixed review is considered a hatchet job?

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 12:39pm

Roma Torre of NY 1 gave it a very good review. Saw it in a previous incarnation and enjoyed it back than. I also have a filmed version of it along with a ton of other titles from a company long since gone that I got at Footlight. They were mostly straight plays but the had a filmed version (a little abridged) of the original Working. It is basically set pieces for each song.

[JudyDenmark]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 11:33am

The NYT review echoed how I felt about it too, though I also thought Byrne was overpraised. (Michael Shannon was the acting highlight, for me.) I didn't know the play at all, and it did feel really, really long to me, and frankly a bit pretentious. I had chalked this up to my own lack of knowledge of the material and figured it was just over my head, but it's sort of nice to see from some of the reviews that it wasn't just me.

[PJPan]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 9:28am

Comden Green said: "I think most of the reviews are spot on.  

One in particular mentions Gallagher's act four speech.   I was also struck by the choices made here.   It seemed clear to me that these were directorial decisions rather than Gallagher's himself.  And I'm not sure they worked.  It is a long speech.  He delivers the whole thing locked in one spot leaning against the mantle.  It is delivered in a near monotone.  Quite stilted.  I understand that he is intended to be primarily in his own mind at this moment but it sure didn't help us to connect with him.  

Am I wrong here?   I don't pretend to be particularly profound or insightful but I love his acting and I knew this was his big moment and it just didn't seem to work. 

Anyone else have thoughts on this?"

Most of Act 4 didn't work for me, which was a shame considering it comes right off the (to me) high of Lange's speech. It was the only time during the show that I felt every minute of the runtime, primarily because the James/Edmund scene wasn't as compelling as the show thinks it is. It's a long downbeat that perks up slightly when Michael Shannon returns, but even then there's another 30 minutes of show to go.

 

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 9:26am

 

I don’t read the Times review as a pan or as dismissive. To me, it’s very even-handed. I have no basis for an opinion on how much the show has or has not evolved since the first preview, but what Brantley describes is very much what I saw onstage.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 9:16am

I certainly can understand that people feel differently. I just don't think it's right to pan the production because it's not in line with Long Day's Journeys that he's seen in the past. I think this production and these actors are doing it differently, yes, but that doesn't mean it's bad. I think there's a difference between, "I respect the choices that are being made here, but I don't like them" and Brantley's review, which is completely dismissive. These aren't exactly amateurs putting up this show.

[AC126748]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 9:13am

Neon, no disrespect meant, but it seems clear from your comments here and on the other thread that you can't process how anyone could feel differently about this production than you do. Many of us do, though, and it's not because we didn't understand it or made up our minds in advance. Brantley's review aligns almost completely with my feelings on this production -- except I think he overpraised Byrne. And for the record I saw the production for the first time just a few days ago.

[neonlightsxo]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 9:06am

themysteriousgrowl, I saw the first preview too and I saw it again about 2 weeks later. It is actually better than it was then. The relationships and characters are more defined. But it seems like Brantley & McNulty of the LA Times had their minds made up to pan it before they even saw it.

I understand the directorial criticisms, though I don't agree, but I think outright panning the production is just absurd.

It's not the fault of the actors, who are all giving their all.

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 09:06 AM

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 8:27am

 

Brantley effectively put into words a lot of what I felt when I saw the show.  But I saw the first preview and figured things would coalesce and even out after a couple weeks. It sounds like they haven’t.

[Comden Green]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 7:13am

I think most of the reviews are spot on.  

One in particular mentions Gallagher's act four speech.   I was also struck by the choices made here.   It seemed clear to me that these were directorial decisions rather than Gallagher's himself.  And I'm not sure they worked.  It is a long speech.  He delivers the whole thing locked in one spot leaning against the mantle.  It is delivered in a near monotone.  Quite stilted.  I understand that he is intended to be primarily in his own mind at this moment but it sure didn't help us to connect with him.  

Am I wrong here?   I don't pretend to be particularly profound or insightful but I love his acting and I knew this was his big moment and it just didn't seem to work. 

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 07:13 AM

[ChiTheaterFan]

Posted: 4/28/16 at 12:14am

Chris Jones from the Chicago tribune, whose reviews I usually agree with, really didn't seem to like the performances. He also mixes up Edmund and Jamie at one point, referring to Jamie as sickly and ill with consumption. http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/broadway/sc-long-days-journey-into-night-broadway-ent-0427-20160427-column.html

 

i am surprised to see so many negative reviews. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I did think the end dragged a bit but I don't know if that was the play itself or the production, as this was the first time I've seen it. 

 

Update:  Jones has now fixed the mistake in the review. 

Updated On: 4/28/16 at 12:14 AM

[bjh2114]

Posted: 4/27/16 at 11:47pm

I actually agree with Brantley's review here except I didn't love Byrne as much as he did.  I found Michael Shannon to be far more successful.  I think it's a totally fair review.  But again, people call him "wrong" for having a different opinion than theirs.  And no, phillytheatreguy10, for me the time did NOT fly by.  I felt every minute of the 3 3/4 hours.

[Scarywarhol]

Posted: 4/27/16 at 11:41pm

Actually usually agree with Brantley, but I think he was dismissive here. So silly that he shares a paper with Isherwood, who will praise anything with a lot of camp that appeals to his nostalgia or laziness as an audience member. 

[Phillytheatreguy10]

Posted: 4/27/16 at 10:36pm

Funny, reading Brantley's review it seemed he could've used a good editor too! Dare I say a self-indulgent pan! What an ass- I have tickets to see this and from all people I've heard that have seen it said the time flies by. Also, I understand what he is saying that the energy seems contained, however, when emotions run so high in a show like this, it is important contain your energy as not to really hurt your fellow actors. The choices you make can be bold, but if "lapels are grabbed" and "bodies are launched at the floor" or wtf ever he said, that's the reason that fight directors make a living! If this review was so inept, I can't wait to see what he thinks of "A Streetcar Named Desire" an, imo, near perfect production.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 4/27/16 at 10:36pm

I disagree with Brantley, rather strongly, about Lange's Mary. But I get why he said what he said. I thought it was a dangerous performance, more self-aware than other Marys, larger, yes, a healthy dose of Williams blended into the O'Neill.  But brilliantly conceived, stunningly executed.  I'm not surprised that her work isn't universally praised here. But she takes great risks, and that's the thrill. (And it is thrilling.) She had me in tears twice, in part because Mary provoked them, and no doubt in part because Lange, artist, went for broke.