Long Day's Journey Into Night was the Dysfunctional Family play that founded the genre as we know it today, and if this Goodman Theater production doesn't move to Broadway following its Chicago run, then New York's Theater District deserves to be converted into a daycare center. Robert Falls brings this epic-length confessional home in a record three-and-a-half hours with never an instant of time-stepping or fly-catching. And in spite of the Big-Name presence of the formidable Brian Dennehy, this is no star turn but a superb example of ensemble playing at its most virtuosic. Falls and company even manage to find moments of grim humor in the torpid suffering of the Tyrone clan (with three drunks in it, there's gotta be a few laughs somewhere, for chrissakes).
Add Santo Loquasto's museum-accurate replica of the author's New London beachfront residence, Brian MacDevitt's gloomy but never obstructive lighting, and Richard Woodbury's mournful foghorn serenade, and we have the perfect environment for getting acquainted with a family we can't help but love for their anger and endurance, even as their misery makes us secretly rejoice that we aren't a part of it.
