Too many recent stagings of Eugene O'Neill's greatest play - arguably the greatest of all American plays - have tried to rush the actors, cut the script, or take other desperate measures to shave the show's outsized running time. Granted, the current Broadway revival's 255-minute journey does make us wonder if a few of the repetitious arguments could be tightened here and there. But doing so would ultimately compromise the drama's tragic grandeur -- one that is never shortchanged in Robert Falls' weighty, fateful, agonizing, yet compulsively engrossing slog through the regrets and recriminations of an amazingly dysfunctional family.
The only weak link of this truly majestic staging is Vanessa Redgrave, too actressy-showy as the mother. Yes, the character is supposed to stand apart from the family because of her hidden drug habit, but there's still the feeling that every time Redgrave comes onstage, the reality stops and the "acting" begins.
Too bad, because we get both realism and fabulous performances from Brian Dennehy, quickly proving himself one of our great living actors; and from Philip Seymour Hoffman (dissipated Jamie) and Robert Sean Leonard (consumptive Edmund), whose third-act confrontation is as powerful and heartbreaking as any in this play's history.
