Succession's Brian Cox 星／主役にするs in an American 行う／開催する／段階 epic... but at three-and-a-half hours it can feel like a cheerless 悲惨 ultra-マラソン, 令状s PATRICK MARMION
Long Day’s 旅行 Into Night
Wyndham’s Theatre, London
?Was ever a play better 肩書を与えるd? Eugene O’Neill’s 1941 autobiographical American 演劇 now starring Brian Cox as an actor-経営者／支配人 and patriarch of a dysfunctional family is いつかs あられ／賞賛するd as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century. But at three-and-a-half hours it can also feel like a cheerless 悲惨 ultra-マラソン that’s as likely to leave you feeling 敗北・負かすd as it is to 奮起させる awe.
Cox has cornered the market in dysfunctional dads after four seasons as the monstrous マスコミ mogul Logan Roy in Succession on TV. Here though he goes 負かす／撃墜する-market and 支援する in time as James Tyrone, a miserly former actor-経営者／支配人 in 1912, left with nothing in 退職 but faded memories of former glories and the 半分-comic 有罪の判決 that his beloved Shakespeare was a good Irish カトリック教徒.
His wife Mary (Patricia Clarkson, from The 駅／配置する スパイ／執行官 and Good Night And Good Luck) is a wistful former convent school girl who has now become （麻薬）常用者d to あへん to 扱う／治療する her arthritis. And their two sons (Daryl McCormack from Bad Sister on Apple TV+ and rising 星／主役にする Laurie Kynaston) are dipsomaniac drifters - one with a taste for 売春婦s, the other 苦しむing from tuberculosis (or ‘消費’ as it was then known).
Eugene O’Neill’s 1941 autobiographical American 演劇 now starring Brian Cox as an actor-経営者／支配人 and patriarch of a dysfunctional family is いつかs あられ／賞賛するd as one of the greatest plays of the 20th century
But at three-and-a-half hours it can also feel like a cheerless 悲惨 ultra-マラソン that’s as likely to leave you feeling 敗北・負かすd as it is to 奮起させる awe. Brian Cox pictured with co-星／主役にする Patricia Clarkson
Cox has cornered the market in dysfunctional dads after four seasons as the monstrous マスコミ mogul Logan Roy in Succession on TV
Now 老年の 77, Cox remains a 軍隊 to be reckoned with in a character that’s supposed to be 65. Not unlike Logan Roy, he is a roving 火山 looking for an excuse to 爆発する. When he kicks off at his two boys for their 欠如（する） of ambition, his eyeballs stand out on stalks a good yard in 前進する. And yet, unlike Roy, he has a softer, sentimental 味方する, 解任するing how he 難破させるd his 行う／開催する／段階 career by playing it 安全な, for money.
He also shows 広大な／多数の／重要な tenderness and charm around Clarkson as his beloved Mary, a woman who married beneath her 駅／配置する. She has the most 利益／興味ing 役割, haunted by the loss of a child and her past playing piano for admiring 修道女s at school, and stilling her 時折の 激怒（する） with wry humour. Yet even she 証明するs ever more numinous.
Most of Cox’s fury is 焦点（を合わせる）d on the boys. It is met by McCormack’s shifty-注目する，もくろむd older brother Jamie with a combination of deference, avoidance and deceit. Kynaston’s younger brother Edmund ? the O’Neillish 役割 of the 拷問d writer ? 持つ／拘留するs his own with Cox, 会合 his father’s quotation of Shakespeare with the bleaker poetry of Baudelaire. Thank God, therefore, for touches of Irish humour from Derry Girls’ Louisa Harland as a 破壊分子 maid.
Nothing wrong with the 事実上の／代理 then, but still Jeremy Herrin’s morose 生産／産物 left me feeling buried alive in Lizzie Clachan’s dour, 棺-like 始める，決める of undecorated boards and 衣装s of greyed-out greens and beige. It’s as though all four characters have given up hope before the show has even started. Sitting 負かす／撃墜する to guzzle endless 容積／容量s of whisky, it’s all jaw-jaw as they dig ever deeper 炭坑，オーケストラ席s.
So, as a distant 霧 horn calls them into the night, and もや rolls in off the 大西洋 Ocean ‘like the ghost of the sea’, this is a pretty good approximation to purgatory - and not an experience I can in good 良心 recommend to anyone.
