Photo credit: Jez Smith
We will be in Portland on Sunday for the afternoon presentation of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night. Seeing this production is our early anniversary gift to ourselves so we splurged and will be sitting center front row.
William Hurt, whose acting I have admired for a long time, stars as James Tyrone. The play is directed by Andrew Upton, who is co-artistic director with wife Cate Blanchett of the Sydney Theater Company. It opened in Sydney, where Time Out Sydney published this review (opening paragraph below):
For a few years in the 1980s William Hurt was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. The Washington DC-born actor (The Big Chill, Broadcast News, Gorky Park) won an Oscar for Kiss of the Spider Woman playing Molina, a gay window dresser in a South American prison who survives day-to-day on his memories of trashy old movies. To see Hurt, now 60, playing Eugene O'Neill's deluded patriarch James Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night on the Sydney Theatre stage, is to experience the unique privilege of watching an actor who excels at conveying self-deception. His eyes deep-set and distant, his voice, a somnolent, teasing murmur, Hurt's very presence seems to be struggling from the depths of a pleasant dream into the cold light of day.
This is a video trailer about the production:
"Long Day's Journey Into Night" Aug. 13-Sept. 5 from Artists Repertory Theatre on Vimeo.
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12 comments:
This should be some performance. Be sure to tell us about it.
bfk~ It was absolutely marvelous.
will you make a Writerquake-review? i so love Eugene O'Neill...
but anniversary gift? what kind? :-)
congratulations then, i know it must be something wonderful, taking into consideration the gift :-)
Roxana~ I am not sure if I would be able to adequately express my feelings about the play...
If it comes it comes, I guess.
You are so kind to think of me and certainly your friendship is gift enough. September 1 will be our 15th wedding anniversary, so we called this an early celebration. October 15 will be my 25th sobriety anniversary, so I thought of this play as a commemoration there too.
How wonderful. That sounds like a wonderful way to spend your 15th. You are so right, live theater does enhance life. Bull Hurt is such an interesting actor. I can't help but thinking about his complicated relationship history whenever he is mentioned.
p.s. Your email address has gone missing. I can't find it. I will be in town Friday-Wednesday and then I am going to the Oregon coast. Hope to see you!
Oh wonderful. If I remember rightly, I saw Jack Lemmon
do it on a London Stage quite a long time ago. He was magnificent.
Have a lovely time.
La Belette Rouge~ I had totally forgotten about Hurt's relationship past but do now. He seems like such a centered human being, so here's hoping the chaos is far behind him now.
Sent you a FB message...
Friko~ We did have a lovely time. Thanks. Lemmon was a wonderful dramatic actor; I wonder what role he played in the production you saw in London...
thank you, i had read the previous post after leaving the comment here and understood about the anniversaries :-)
a huge summery hug from me, for both celebrations!
Roxana~ And a huge summery hug (love that phrase) to you too!
Holy cow! Happy Anniversary, Lydia, and I hope you enjoyed the play...it sounds great. And I love William Hurt, too...one of the most handsome and talented actors of the '80s for sure. Yum!
earthtoholly~ Thanks much and happy 2nd blogiversary to you and your wonderful blog. Yes, Wm. Hurt was and is quite special. :)
William Hurt is one of my very favorite actors. I have a few movies that I thought he was incredibly good in. "Children of a lesser God" with Marlee Matlin in one of her first major roles and her winning the best actress academy award. That movie was so so good. "The Doctor" where William plays a Dr. with a really bad beside manner for years, then he gets cancer and gets to experience what it's like for the "other side" as a patient and how Drs. start treating him...very good! And then last but not least...and so incredibly cute and so funny and ironic "A couch in New York" with William and Juliette Binoche. He plays a psychiatrist who reads an add in a paper to trade homes for a vacation, from a woman in France. So he goes to her place for a while and she leaves and goes to stay at his place. Now don't forget he has patients that come to see him when he is not there, but the French lady is and what starts happening is so so funny. I recommend this movie for all.
But basically anything William Hurt is in I always like, because he is such an intense person and a very intense actor.
Okay, I'm done giving my review now. Hope you had fun and loved the play.
Love and Blessings,
Rhi
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