I enjoy the theater. Enough so that I have season tickets at the local one, three blocks from my apartment. And they’ve done a really good job since they reopened in their new facility (on the old grounds). But it seems like every season there’s one dud, and last night’s was it. A Long Day’s Journey into Night was more like A Long Night’s Attempt to Keep From Falling Asleep. Highlights from the audience:
- The boy said I’ve never been that fidgety in a play before.
- The one intermission came less than an hour into the play, which was three hours long.
- We both were checking our watched almost religiously to see when the three hour torture session would be over.
- In the first part one gentleman on the other side of the balcony was actually snoring (someone woke him, thankfully).
- Many, many heads were nodding, including the poor woman beside me.
Not good signs.
I understand why the play won the pulitzer; its treatment of addiction in a time when such things weren’t discussed would have been ground-breaking. But in today’s bare-all environment, references to being a “drug fiend” are merely quaint. And you’ve got to work on the pacing of that particular play. There were massively long segments that just weren’t interesting or engaging. At all.
Eh, as I said, they usually have one play that’s a dud, so this was it this season. The next two, The Music Man and The Normal Heart both look to be much more engaging. Thank heavens.