Long journey into the night

Long Journey Into Night is the masterpiece by American playwright Eugene O’Neill. Written between 1941 and 1942, it was first performed in Stockholm in 1956 and won the Pulitzer Prize the following year, after the author's death. Sidney Lumet directed the first film adaptation in 1962, starring Katharine Hepburn and Ralph Richardson. Set in 1912, the powerful and poignant drama recounts a day in the life of the Tyrone family, amidst conflicts, addictions and painful secrets. Gabriele Lavia and Federica Di Martino bring to the stage this work-confession, “a journey backwards” into O’Neill's life, a pitiless precipice into the’bitterness of a failure without redemption.

Director's Notes
Long Day’s Journey into Night is the title Eugene O’Neill gives to his central work, his opera-confession. (O’Neill's father had been a very successful actor, like the protagonist of his play).
The prison-house of the “bad family” that O’Neill tells us about is, after all, his own home. And herein lies the winding path of a possible staged-journey of this truly bitter work, written by O’Neill now close to death to take “a journey backwards” through his life. A merciless journey into the bitterness of failure without redemption. Men's lives are made of tenderness and violence. Of love and contempt. Understanding and rejection. Of family and its ruin.

Gabriele Lavia