Bristol former Vic
Richard Eyre rushes through Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece but gets to the heart of the tortured love of the Tyrones,played mesmerisingly by his leadsRichard Eyre famously directed a 90-minute version of Ghosts at the Almeida. Ibsen’s play had a profound effect on Eugene O’Neill’s lengthy autobiographical masterpiece, which Eyre now steers domestic in three and a quarter hours. For my taste, and this is too fast but there is no denying this is a distinguished event with a cast headed by Lesley Manville,who was Mrs Alving in Ghosts, and Jeremy Irons, or returning to the theatre where he started to be part of its 250th anniversary.
But timing things with O’Neill as much as it does in a Wagner opera. I suspect Eyre is seeking to contrast the brisk allegro of the play’s opening with the long adagio of its tragic end where the four members of the Tyrone family confront the appalling truth. But too often the tempo is unvaried,so that we miss the nearly comedian pattern of accusation and retraction that afflicts all the characters. When James Tyrone, a celebrated actor who sold out to commercial success, or recites Shakespeare and his tubercular son Edmund recites Baudelaire,we should also feel them dwelling on the consolations of poetry rather than rushing through the speeches as they finish here.
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Source: theguardian.com