O'Neill: 3 in 1 Playwright, Director, and Talent Seeker

I'm no playwright or actor, but the initial scene and character descriptions in O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey into Night struck me as both unusual yet captivatingly intricate. The first thought that popped into my head was how difficult it must have been to cast actors suitable for the roles, and how little liberties the directors must have been able to take throughout the play.

Take, for example, the description of Mary Tyrone. Although her character description begins as a physical one, it eventually evolves into deeply psychological description that arises from the physical, almost as if O'Neill started a train of thought and, though it didn't relate too much to the character holistically, kept it going because it resonated either with his own personal experiences or just seemed compelling:

"What strikes one immediately is her extreme nervousness. Her hands are never still. They were once beautiful hands, with long, tapering fingers, but rheumatism has knotted the joints and warped the fingers, so that now they have an ugly crippled look. One avoids looking at them, the more so because one is conscious she is sensitive about their appearance and humiliated by her inability to control the nervousness which draws attention to them."

O'Neill clearly had a very direct perception of who he wanted Mary to be. The air-tight description leaves barely any wiggle room for interpretation from directors.

I couldn't help but then think of what the novel version of A Long Day's Journey into Night would be like. The stage direction is already incredibly specific and seems descriptive enough to be one. For example, on page 55:

"He grabs the bottle and pours a drink, adds ice water and drinks. As he does so, he hears someone coming in the front door. He puts the glass hastily on the tray and sits down again, opening his book. Jamie comes in from the front parlor, his coat over his arm..."

The description keeps on going, too.

O'Neill's calculating directions allow for an incredibly readable script, but it does leave some questions for how it could have been creatively interpreted by directors. That is, if it needed to anyway. I'm excited to read the rest of the play for its miserable characters spiraling downward into night (AKA complete misery?), and for his highly evocative imagery.

-Carrie Sun