Long Day’s Journey Into Night

OPENING: Sometime Between 1970 and 1973

CLOSING: Sometime Between 1970 and 1973

Seen: Sometime Between 1970 and 1973

LOCATION: William’s College

Great theater doesn’t always have to be on Broadway.

If my twelve year old self could see my writing that, she would be mortified. But it’s true. In 2022, I saw a grand total of 43 shows. Of those 43 shows, my number one pick has to go to an Off-Broadway production that ended up closing early. My friend’s son did a high school production in 2021 that knocked my socks off. When it’s all said and done, it really does come down to the whole package.

My dad attended Williams College in the early 70s. During the time he was there, Williams became the alma mater of several individuals who would find success in the entertainment industry after graduation. I believe that this could be attributed to the founding of the Williamstown Theater festival in the early sixties. And because of this partnership between the college and the festival, my dad was treated to a student production of Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

I’ll be honest: Long Day’s Journey is an odd choice for a college production. It’s over three hours long and extremely dense. It was O’Neill’s pet project, based on his own family experience, down to the location of the books on the bookshelves on the set. I had to read it twice when I was in college and I’m not sure I fully grasped it either time. But I will be the first to admit that sometimes the denser pieces are as dense as they are because of the huge amount of nuggets packed into the script. Despite the rich material, the fact remains that text is thick and slow paced and not ideal for a college setting.

Eugene O’Neill was destined for a life in the theatre from the moment he was born, which happened to be October 16, 1888 in a hotel room on the corner of what eventually become Times Square. Only a few days after his birth, the family packed up and hit the road, following patriarch James O’Neill as he went on tour as an actor.

Eugene began working on Long Day’s Journey near the end of his life. After years of massive successes on Broadway, he as plagued with lukewarm reception of his later work. Was the work he was producing any less quality than his previous work? I don’t think so. In his later years, O’Neill was very sick. His work also started to “Decline” during the second world war, when audiences had a sudden change in tastes and preferences. He also fell victim to that time old curse: he was getting older. Even a hundred years later, this is an unfortunate truth for many playwrights.

I truly believe that O’Neill knew his days were numbered by the mid-forties. It was around this time that he started writing Long Day’s Journey. It was very much a personal project; he condensed the summer of 1912 in the life of his family into one day. But O’Neill was protective; once he considered it “finished”, he sent one copy to the Library of Congress and another to Yale with strict instructions that it was not to be produced until twenty five years after his death.

O’Neill died in April of 1953 at the age of sixty four. And then Carlotta, who had cared for him in his decline, did the unthinkable: she released the manuscript early.

It was a move that was highly criticized. How could she go against her husband like that? Let’s try to get into her head for a minute. Eugene’s beef really was with Broadway, not with the art of writing itself. According to Carlotta, his greatest fear was that Long Day would be seen as self-indulgent tripe. It is for this reason that she did not release it to a New York producer. Instead, she released it to Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre, where it was met with great acclaim by the entire Swedish royal family and aristocracy. Then, and only then, did Carlotta begin to talk to producers about bringing it to Broadway.

My dad saw this production at some point during his college career in the 1970s, when he was at least a sophomore. I can pinpoint it to these three years because one of the performers – one of those who went on to have an entertainment career –  was a year below him. However, the program has no dates so I cannot pinpoint it’s time frame any closer.

At any rate, it was performed in the theater that the college shared with the festival. This partnership continues today, with shows workshopped at the festival moving to professional runs across the country. In 2018, it hosted the world premiere of The Cost of Living, which opened on Broadway this season.

No reviews exist of the Williams production. The one actor I was able to locate did not respond to my request for an interview. So I choose to believe that it was a well done college production, considering the level of talent at the school at the time. Williams was never an art school, but it would be wrong to say that it was not a creative hub. I think that was a good fit for my dad – a man who had a deep appreciation for the arts but never called himself an artist at a school that appreciated the arts but did not call itself an art school.

And now that it’s many years later, I believe that Williams deepened his appreciation for the arts. And for that, I am grateful.

Dowling, Robert M. “Eugene O’Neill: A Life in Four Acts” New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016.

Internet Broadway Database. “Eugene O’Neill.” Ibdb.com. Accessed December 2022.

Internet Broadway Database. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Ibdb.com. Accessed December 2022.

Tony Awards. www.tonyawards.com. Accessed December 2022.

Williamstown Theater Festival. “Who We Are” https://wtfestival.org/about/ Accessed December 2022.