Long Day's Journey Into Night (BAM)
Closed 3h 30m
Long Day's Journey Into Night (BAM)
82

Long Day's Journey Into Night (BAM) NYC Reviews and Tickets

82%
(65 Ratings)
Positive
85%
Mixed
12%
Negative
3%
Members say
Great acting, Absorbing, Great writing, Intense, Intelligent

About the Show

The Bristol Old Vic’s staging of Eugene O’Neill’s searing autobiographical family portrait comes to BAM starring celebrated and screen actor Jeremy Irons ('The Borgias') as whiskey-soaked patriarch James Tyrone.

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Show-Score Member Reviews (65)

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179 Reviews | 29 Followers
100
Absorbing, Great acting, Great staging, Great writing, Intense

See it if This play is an extraordinary intense experience delivered by four great actors who are able to portray the complex, three dimensional

Don't see it if you are not a fan of Eugene O'nell Read more

197 Reviews | 74 Followers
98
Great acting, Great writing, Dizzying, Intelligent, Edgy

See it if You want to be completely absorbed into a tragic family drama by a set of truly outstanding actors. Breathtaking

Don't see it if You saw some legendary production of LDJiN that can never be replicated. Or you can’t physically sit 3.5 hours. Although BAM seats are comfy Read more

97 Reviews | 16 Followers
98
Great acting, Must see, Great staging, Relevant

See it if you enjoy seriously great acting that appears totally natural, gets you interested in the dialogue, and makes time fly. Amazing.

Don't see it if you can't concentrate on anything that is longer than a twitter text... Read more

277 Reviews | 38 Followers
95
Great writing, Intense, Masterful, Must see, Riveting

See it if You've never seen this play. An absolute masterpiece of American theater very well-executed by this cast (especially Manville [& Irons])

Don't see it if Emotionally devastating family dramas aren't your jam.

305 Reviews | 98 Followers
94
Absorbing, Great acting, Great staging, Great writing, Masterful

See it if One of the great plays of American theater performed by a company of exemplary British actors. Not to be missed.

Don't see it if You want happy, comedy, music , or dance. ..and can't concentrate for over 3 hours.

428 Reviews | 53 Followers
92
Absorbing, Great acting, Intelligent

See it if Class A actors including Irons and Manville. Great theater/venue. Interesting and ambitious, although potentially distracting, set design.

Don't see it if No reason not to, unless not an O'Neill fan. If Lange and Byrne production was enough.

165 Reviews | 23 Followers
91
Absorbing, Great acting, Masterful, Profound, Riveting

See it if you want to see one of the greatest American plays with a masterful cast.

Don't see it if you want something less absorbing and not too long (almost 3 hours)

251 Reviews | 116 Followers
90
Great acting, Intelligent, Intense, Resonant, Profound

See it if Lesley Manville as Mary Tyrone, the addicted wife of whiskey-soused James (Jeremy Irons) is impeccable. The best of O'Neill.

Don't see it if You can't hear well; Irons keeps turning his back to the audience. Good blocking, bad projection. Play is long and depressing.

Critic Reviews (28)

The New York Times
May 13th, 2018

"This 'Journey' is often downright sprightly. That doesn’t mean that after three-and-half hours in the company of the Tyrones you don’t still feel numb with fatigue...For a while, it’s a gripping, oddly enjoyable approach...In the play’s second half...the action slows down to allow each character an aria of self-explanation. And it’s then you begin to sense that something’s off-kilter in this production. Could these people really be members of the same family, or even the same play?"
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Time Out New York
May 13th, 2018

"There are big-ticket plays that terrify their actors; famous stars who fluster their colleagues; massive sets that turn environments from living things into monuments. The Bristol Old Vic’s 'Long Day’s Journey Into Night' manages to have all three problems at once in the blustery, muddled production now at BAM, where the show’s three and half hours lumber very slowly by...Although Manville and Irons find wonderful moments, the play as a whole keeps staggering."
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New York Magazine / Vulture
May 13th, 2018

"Featuring underwhelming starring performances by Jeremy Irons and Lesley Manville...The show is startlingly lifeless, the majority of its potential tragic power sacrificed to mannered, unvaried performances that seldom make the dive into anything resembling emotional truth...It’s all breathtakingly pretty — and hugely distracting. Rather than a space in which an emotionally dropped-in story can play out, the set feels like an excited intellectual exercise."
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Deadline
May 13th, 2018

"The scathing autobiographical honesty and desolation of the playwright’s masterpiece...Manville, especially, brings that heartbroken quality to the fore in a wrenching performance...A mesmerizing symphony of rambling, barely disguised resentments and outbursts of flashing anger...Irons matches her step-by-step, his terrific portrayal of James moving sure-footedly...In this production, only Keenan, as the drunken, brothel-going elder brother, falls short."
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The Washington Post
May 13th, 2018

"Eyre’s mixed bag of a revival, one alternately engrossing and overly wound up, and in any case, disappointingly, never a soul-shatterer. The absorbing aspects have mostly to do with the motivations and interactions of Irons’s James and Manville’s Mary...It rarely has been as clear as in the way Irons and Manville impress it upon us the depths of James’s and Mary’s narcissism, how their lifelong fixations on their own stunted childhoods have rendered them incapable of nurturing anyone else."
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Theatermania
May 14th, 2018

"Their performances brim with anguish and gritty realism, while Eyre's direction adds a dreamlike patina to this story...Irons's performance is notable for capturing the silent gestures buried in O'Neill's work that only a great actor could tease out...Though Eyre's direction keeps the action moving despite voluminous passages of dialogue, the play's second half sputters during the long scene between Edmund and James...Fortunately, this production does not drift."
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Lighting & Sound America
May 14th, 2018

"If Eyre has guided Manville and Irons into giving performances that surely must rank among their best, he hasn't done as well by the younger generation of Tyrones...This is not the most accomplished production of 'Long Day's Journey Into Night' to come our way in recent years, but anyone who loves this piece -- one of American drama's very few masterpieces -- will be fascinated by the way Manville and Irons inhabit their characters' darkest corners."
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New York Stage Review
May 12th, 2018

"It could be said that 'Long Day’s Journey Into Night' is the absolute quintessential American play—the greatest of all 20th-century American plays...Manville seizes the opportunity to turn Mary into a tour de force of unmitigated anxiety. And appreciative nods to Irons—who looks like Eugene O’Neill (!)—for giving a typically generous on-the-mark performance. Is Eyre’s meeting with O’Neill perfect? It’s a close as anyone might want. Nothing seems missing."
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