NEW YORK — She was a beautiful, privileged teenager, adored by her father, with dreams of being a concert pianist, or a nun. Then she fell in love with a dashing young actor, and it all went to hell.
If you don't recognize Mary Cavan Tyrone, the morphine-addled wife and mother in Long Day's Journey Into Night, by that condensed introduction, you now have a new opportunity to meet her, via Jessica Lange. 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, which opened Wednesday at the American Airlines Theatre.
The Tyrones — Mary, her husband James and their grown sons, James, Jr. and Edmund — last popped up on Broadway in 2003, in a powerhouse production featuring Vanessa Redgrave and leading O'Neill interpreter Brian Dennehy as the elder Tyrones. Robert Sean Leonard was cast as the sickly Edmund, and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman played the embittered, dissolute James Jr., or Jamie, as he is called.
This staging, by British director Jonathan Kent, doesn't pack the emotional or theatrical wallop of its predecessor, but its bleak naturalism remains compelling for 3 ½ hours (excluding a 15-minute intermission). Though the venue is large, Kent keeps the performances relatively intimate, and painfully accessible.
Gabriel Byrne, no stranger to O'Neill himself — his previous Broadway stints were in revivals of A Moon for the Misbegotten and A Touch of the Poet — presents a James Sr. who has retained the courtly elegance and Irish charm that endeared him to audiences, and to Mary. Byrne conveys his character's affability, and his love and concern for his wife, so easily and with such tenderness that we are continually unsettled when reminded of his less appealing qualities. The narcissism and miserliness that have undone his career and caused his family such suffering are portrayed in a matter-of-fact way, as is his searing disapproval of elder son Jamie.
The striking Michael Shannon brings a flush of earnestness to Jamie, who follows his father into acting, but with less enthusiasm or success. Shannon's rangy appearance and forthright manner suggest a man who might be more comfortable working outside than as a matinee idol. When drink loosens Jamie's tongue further, Shannon shows both the weight of his hopelessness and his lingering, protective love for Edmund — played touchingly, if with a bit too much of a contemporary slant, by John Gallagher, Jr.
But 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.
