“Verleden is heden, of niet? Het is ook de toekomst. We proberen onzself daaruit te liegen, maar het leven drukt ons er met de neus op.”
For those new to Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece Lange Dagreis Naar De Nacht / Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the opening image of Ivo van Hove’s masterly adaptation for Toneelgroep Amsterdam sets the tone accurately as a family drama as the four Tyrones – mother, father, two sons – embrace. But it’s a disarming sequence too, as the next three hours sees this nuclear family unit exploded as drug addiction, terminal disease, alcohol abuse and the bitter frustrations of past and present tear them apart. And they each float around the vast stage of their modern home like isolated atoms, the mind is drawn back to that opening image, reminding of the tragedy of the disintegration in front of us.
.jpg?resize=320%2C213)
And though Jan Versweyveld’s beautiful set stretches across a wide and deep space with just the minimalist touches of design, van Hove’s production swells to fill it to the brim with the bruised pain, aching recriminations and crushed dreams of these four who are lost in this world, their inescapable own little worlds in fact, that simultaneously keep them trapped here yet unable to interact in a meaningful way. That opening embrace is inspired by Mary’s return from treatment for her scarcely acknowledged morphine addiction but over the course of the day that follows, the ‘long day’ of the title, her return provokes the subtlest of shifts in their collective self-delusion. Continue reading “Review: Lange Dagreis Naar De Nacht, Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg”