Cynthia Meier, director of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” gives us three good reasons why we should see the play that’s opening soon at Tucson’s The Rouge Theatre.
- “Long Day’s Journey into Night” is a moving portrayal of a family wracked by addiction. Anyone who has been touched by alcoholism or drug addiction will find the play riveting, and anyone who has a family will be deeply touched. Set in 1912, the play centers on the figure of Mary Tyrone, a woman who is addicted to morphine (a prescribed opioid pain reliever). Her husband and two sons struggle with the effects of the drug on the pivotal woman in their lives, at the same time as they drink themselves into oblivion recounting past regrets and old wounds.
- Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play is regarded as his masterpiece and a classic of American drama. Tennessee Williams (another great American playwright) said: “Eugene O’Neill gave birth to the American theatre and died for it.”
Eugene O’Neill won the Pulitzer Prize for drama four times and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He is the only American dramatist to have won the Nobel Prize. It was written to exorcise the ghosts in O’Neill’s life. He called it a “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood.”
