STAGE REVIEW 'Long Day's Journey' brings on the night

The Victorian Players take the audience through a family's harrowing summer day in 1912.
By GARRY L. CLARK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- The heart-wrenching horror of the implosion of a family was portrayed at Thursday's opening performance of "Long Day's Journey into Night" by the Victorian Players.
Considered one of Irish-American playwright Eugene O'Neill's finest works, this drama fairly bursts with brutal honesty and turns a stark, bright, unflinching light on the slow demise of the Tyrone family.
What makes the story all the more emotionally exhausting is the fact that the work is autobiographical in nature, giving an almost too sharply focused picture of O'Neill's younger years. What you have here is O'Neill's (hopefully) cathartic look at reality: his mother's drug dependence, his father's, brother's and his own alcoholism as well as his bout with consumption, or tuberculosis as it is known today.
The play is set on a single day in August 1912 at the Tyrone's summer home, but it could be easily set anywhere, anytime, because anyone who attends a performance will see disturbing elements of people they know, people they love and even parts of themselves.
Characters
Mary, the mother, has once again relapsed into her previous addiction to morphine, initially used to curb physical pain, it has sent its ever-tightening tentacles into the recesses of her emotional pain, rendering her both its willing and unwilling prisoner.
Her husband, James, and sons, Jamie and Edmund, are powerless to reach her, just as she is powerless to reach them, constantly going into diatribes about the past. Her entire family unknowingly jumps on this bandwagon, effectively blaming anyone and everyone but themselves for their ills.
James was once a well-known actor, but his days of glory are long since gone. Jamie has done little with his life except become an alcoholic, much to his father's consternation even though he is blind to his own alcoholism.
The family spends the day bickering and apologizing with each other, although virtually each apology is farcical in nature as it is worded with an undercurrent of blame upon the recipient.
The speeches in this play are probably among the most realistic ever written, lending the drama an even more eerily poignant realism.
Cast
Robert Secrist was in fine form as James, a stingy, somewhat odious man who begrudges everything that costs money.
Mary was superbly portrayed by Joan Hamilton in a part which called upon her to characterize the effects of morphine in various stages from her initial injection of the drug to its gradual wearing off.
The part of Jamie was also very well played by John Thompson, who also had to give his performance the effect of differing levels of drunkenness.
A brilliant performance was given by Josh Coy as Edmund in the part based upon the playwright himself. Coy was quite within his element as he bewilderedly tried to hold his family together even through his own failings, only to see them all slipping away.
Also doing well in the minor role of Cathleen, a servant, was Pat Schauweker.
Jean McClure Kelty has done a truly laudable job directing this production.
XPerformances continue at 7:30 tonight and Saturday as well as Thursday, June 14 and 15 with matinees scheduled for 2 p.m. Sunday and June 16.