Long Day's Journey into Night
Ratings26
Average rating4
It's good at first, but by Act 3 all the themes have been developed and the rest of the play is simply digging in further to the already-established ruts.
This might be a play that really suffers in the reading as opposed to the performance.
Intense and harrowing. Realistic and hyper-realistic and melodramatic all at once. It was simultaneously impossible to and impossible not to feel compassion for the Tyrones. Their hyperactive emotions were hard to take. Each conversation would begin to seem too raw and overbearingly naked, but by the end of the speech it was too tragic not to believe. I felt I had to read this book sideways rather than head-on.
A sad portrayal of a family that can't or won't deal with the elephant in the room.
I mean, I know when I'm drunk and arguing with other drunk family members, that's obviously the best time to infuriate them by quoting obscure poetry.
This is a powerful and depressing view of a family that loves each other but not themselves. So they can't change who they are and keep letting each other down. It is possibly the best American play.