The Height of the Storm

C+

You may remember a play by Florian Zeller from a few seasons back, The Father, starring Frank Langella as an older man named Andre sinking into dementia. It captured the fractured nature of the experience and provided a great role for Langella. Now Manhattan Theatre Club has imported, virtually intact, the West End production of another Zeller play about a different elderly man with an increasingly tenuous relationship to reality. As if to imply that it is a riff on the earlier play, the play’s central character is again named Andre and again has daughters named Anne (Amanda Drew) and Elise (Lisa O’Hare, the only actor new to the cast). One important difference is that this Andre has a wife of 50 years named Madeleine. The fact that Andre and Madeleine are played by Olivier winners Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins is the main reason to see this elusive drama. There is a death in the family. Depending on which scene you are watching, your perception of who it is that died may shift. Andre was a noted author whose papers Anne is searching in the hope of finding a rumored diary. Madeleine meets a woman (Lucy Cohu) who claims to have been close to Andre many years before when he and his alleged friend Georges founded a literary journal and invites her for tea. Andre denies any knowledge of Georges. Anne is separating from her husband. Her younger sister Elise, who has a history of poor choices in men, introduces her new beau (James Hillier), who may or may not be an estate agent scheming to get Andre to sell his house. A floral arrangement arrives without a card. Anne’s perusal of the found diary provides shocking information that involves Georges. Andre finds the card that got separated from the flowers and reacts strongly. Unfortunately neither the contents of the diary nor the message on the card are shared with the audience. There is a touch of Pinter in Zeller’s technique.  Each time the scrim descended between scenes, the lady next to me asked whether the play had ended. The good news is that both Pryce and Atkins are at the top of their form, so if your primary goal is to see them in action, you will not be disappointed. However, if you do not like puzzlers that force you to make up your own version of the story, you will be frustrated. Judging from British reviews, many found the play extremely moving. Alas, I am not one of them. Anthony Ward’s set and costumes are evocative. Jonathan Kent’s direction is assured. Running time: one hour 20 minutes; no intermission. It seemed longer.

Long Day’s Journey into Night **

When a Pulitzer and Tony winning play regarded by many as a masterpiece is revived with a stellar cast, it is cause for keen anticipation. And so I was eagerly awaiting Roundabout Theatre’s revival of Eugene O’Neill’s semi-autobiographical play starring Jessica Lange, Gabriel Byrne, Michael Shannon and John Gallagher Jr. as the members of the Tyrone family. O’Neill forbade publication until 25 years after his death, but his widow overrode his wishes and published the play in 1956, only three years after he died. James Tyrone (Byrne) is a miserly 65-year-old actor who sold out by repeating the same lucrative role for too many years. James Jr. (Shannon) is the 33-year-old elder son, a ne’er-do-well who has managed to have a third-rate acting career trading on his father’s name. Edmund (Gallagher), ten years younger, has always been frail and sickly. A would-be writer, he is O’Neill’s stand-in. All three Tyrone men are devoted to the bottle. Finally there is wife and mother Mary (Lange), a faded beauty who became addicted to morphine after Edmund’s birth and has just returned from yet another sanitorium stay. Over four acts stretching from morning to midnight on a day in August 1912, we watch this ultimate dysfunctional family lacerate themselves and each other, expressing affection, hatred, exasperation, blame, sympathy and denial. Brevity and subtlety are not among O’Neill’s strengths. While I remember being tremendously moved by the 1962 film version with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards Jr. and Dean Stockwell, today I found myself restless and impatient. When intermission arrived at the 1 1/2 hour mark, I realized with dread that there were still two hours to go afterwards. The fourth and final act seemed endless. I have been trying to figure out why it didn’t work for me this time. The first problem for me was that Shannon is so much bigger than Byrne that he literally and figuratively overshadows him. In a restrained performance, Byrne is not convincing as a former matinee idol. Lange’s Mary, on the other hand, is much too theatrical for my taste. Shannon has so much presence that he dominates any scene he is in. Gallagher’s Edmund is adequate but unmemorable. Colby Minifie is fine as Cathleen, the maid. The effective set design by Tom Pye features a low ceiling that ominously hangs over the family. Jane Greenwood’s costumes are fine, especially Mary’s dresses in pale colors that suggest her fading away. Jonathan Kent’s direction does not produce a unity of approach from the actors. If you have never seen the play and have the patience to sit for almost four hours, see it. If you have fond memories of an earlier production, treasure them and sit this one out. Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes including intermission.