The Nihilist Music of Eugene O'Neill.

America, land of Hollywood and Broadway, doesn't have too many transcendent world dramas--not that we know about at least. But one we have, one of the greatest family dramas in world history, is Long Day's Journey Into Night: the submergence of family life into hell. It's in part clearly autobiographical. Eugene O'Neill wrote it in the 1920s and kept it in his drawer until his death in the 1950s, probably because to see a production would be too painful for him. It deals with the most painful family issues: accusations, illness, drug addiction, money, alcoholism, isolation, secrets, suspicion, dissipation, nepotism, the anxiety of impending mortality, and worst of all--claustrophobia.

Encountering it is a rite of passage for the American intelligentsia. Once every few years, a new cast of the world's greatest Anglophone actors mount it: either in New York, or London, or LA. Somewhere, full tapes exist of Laurence Olivier and Constance Cummings, or Brian Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave with the young Philip Seymour Hoffman and Robert Sean Leonard, or David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf, or Charles Dance and Jessica Lange with the young Michael Shannon, or Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville, or Earle Hyman and Ruby Dee, or Jason Robards and Colleen Dewherst with the young Campbell Scott, and just last year, Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson. The many sided and exhausting parts demand nothing but the best to respond to each other, endure the stamina of such exhausting roles, and bring their own conceptions and personality and nuance,

Sadly, the only live versions that exist complete on youtube are the two worst reviewed: one with Alfred Molina and Jane Kazmeryk, and another with Jack Lemmon (of all people) with Bethel Leslie with the young Kevin Spacey and Peter Gallagher.

Fortunately, we have this movie version, starring no less than Ralph Richardson, Katherine Hepburn, the young Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. The whole cast inspires awe, but particularly Katherine Hepburn, who finally has a film role that stretches her genius to its full plumage, and Jason Robards, perhaps the distinguished performer of O'Neill in theater history. The movie is absolutely vicious, perhaps even overly so: an abusive family that tears each other to shreds and whose resentments hold barely any compassion for one another. And yet even here, we see just how moving this play can be. These actors interpret the roles as particularly vicious people, yet even they are deserving of compassion and love they don't get, and their emotional ugliness endows them with still more sublime pathos.

O'Neill wasn't a writer of great prose, yet his writing for the stage was pinpoint to the emotional bullseye. Like Chekhov and Hemingway, a paucity of words belied a devastatingly perfect choosing of them. Emotional tension is ratcheted like in Mahler 6 or Berg's Wozzeck, and like those works, it rises to heights that are greater than can be born in equilibrium.

I used to be afraid of this work. I saw David Suchet and Laurie Metcalf do it on the West End in 2012. It was extraordinary, and I couldn't stay for the whole thing. It was just too unbearably sad, and therefore I used to poo-pooh the play. But the reason is great is that it's the nightmare image of what we all fear family life is. I still can barely watch the play. A great performance should leave you shaking. In his most tragic plays, Shakespeare provides comic relief, and even Chekhov's most tragic moments are so ridiculous that they're comic too. O'Neill provides no such relief. This play exists to drive you mad.

Here is the magnum opus of American drama in its full sublimity. You owe it to yourself to experience it.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (1962) - YouTube