The line that's repeated over and over again is, "You're not going to bring that up again, are you?" Oh yes they are. Leaden, turgid, tedious beyond belief, utterly lacking in any leavening humor--even sarcasm would be a relief--the four main actors put a dull stage play on film. Lumet cuts in for a few closeups--but the faces have nothing to say at any angle. Richardson blusters, Stockwell whines, Robards brays, Hepburn frets. But they're all well fed and well liquored up--even Mommy gets her morphine fix--for all their complaints of life's cruelty. O'Neill has a set-piece speech for every character--this is basically O'Neill himself in four bodies. There's no one to care about, no one to root for, no one to identify with. Suck it up, Jamie, and go to the sanitarium. Edmund: get a JOB. Richardson, stop being such a bore about the old days. One could muster up some sympathy for Hepburn if she weren't so annoyingly helpless, always either smiling through or dissolving into tears.
Don't waste any time on this unless you're required to. O'Neill deserves nothing better than to be tossed on the scrap heap of irrelevancy. This play has nothing to offer modern audiences except an idea of what a previous generation thought was "serious" theatre.
Don't waste any time on this unless you're required to. O'Neill deserves nothing better than to be tossed on the scrap heap of irrelevancy. This play has nothing to offer modern audiences except an idea of what a previous generation thought was "serious" theatre.