It’s all the little snips,” McKenna continued. “These great plays are great for a reason because they actually do mirror life and give us information about the whole spectrum of life,” Wentworth said. That familiarity is bolstered because the play explicitly deals with issues many families can relate to - alcoholism, addiction to opiates, illness, and financial stress. You are watching his life in front of you, and some of it, I think, is so close to home.”īecause both Wentworth and McKenna have acted with one another before - and both have adolescent boys of their own at home - much of their inspiration for how they’ve decided to portray their characters comes from personal experience. ” It’s so personal and it’s about his family. “And you are watching, in a way, someone’s diary being enacted,” McKenna said. “There’s a buoyancy and a life force in this play that was kind of a surprise to encounter.” “There’s something in the truthfulness of this writing, of the exposure of this writing, of the love that this family feels, of the fact that they’re all going to have to get up the next morning after the play is over and have breakfast together,” Wentworth said. (EMILY COOPER, Stratford Festival)Īnd it’s that intensity, from both the play’s subject matter and the cast’s heavy rehearsal schedule, that strengthens the bonds between each of the actors, giving their performances an enhanced sense of familial authenticity.īut just as any family can often find a way to laugh in the darkest of circumstances, a dark streak of Irish humour is peppered throughout the play’s heavier subject matter - providing a sense of levity when it’s needed most, and giving the audience brief glimpses of the family’s underlying desire to forgive each other’s past misdeeds. And quite literally, you’re in the rehearsal hall all the time, so it’s very intense - in a way, much more intense than a Shakespeare play.” Scott Wentworth plays James Tyrone and Seana McKenna is Mary Cavan Tyrone in the Stratford Festival production Long Dayâs Journey Into Night, which opens Wednesday at Studio Theatre. “Even when you’re not physically on the stage, you kind of are because you know you’re being talked about, or the last thing you said is being dissected and turned around. “There’s no other story here, other than what is happening to this family,” added Scott Wentworth, who plays James Sr. “It’s a very intimate experience, and you all share an equal burden in the play because you all have major roles to carry.”
THE TESTAMENT OF MARY SEANA MCKENNA PLUS
“You always create a family of sorts when you’re in any play, but when you are actually playing a family and there are only four of you in the family, plus your maid Cathleen, you become very close, very fast,” said Seana McKenna, who plays Mary. laments a career in which he became famous for playing only one character, and Jamie argues with his parents over his drinking and womanizing. to midnight as Edmund awaits his diagnosis, Mary struggles with her morphine addiction after returning from rehab, James Sr. Over four acts, the play spans from 8:30 a.m.
the morphine-addicted mother, Mary Cavan Tyrone James “Jamie” Jr., an out-of-work actor and the Tyrones’ eldest son Edmund, the younger son who, during the play, is diagnosed with tuberculosis and Cathleen, the summer maid. The story told is that of the Tyrone family - the patriarchal and frustrated actor, James Tyrone, Sr. Shortly after O’Neill died, however, his widow Carlotta Monterey went against her late husband’s wishes and had it published in 1956. Because the play so closely mirrors events that took place during his adolescence, O’Neill requested it not to be published until 25 years after his death. O’Neill wrote Long Day’s Journey Into Night in 1941, basing the story on a single day in the life of his family in August 1912, as recorded in his personal diary. “It all takes place in one room, and this is a revolutionary production in the sense that it may be the only one that has ever been done in a space that is the same size as the actual room (playwright Eugene) O’Neill was writing about.” And the fact that we’re doing it in the Studio (Theatre), as opposed to the Tom Patterson Theatre, where it was done before, it will be a very intimate experience for a play that is - conversational isn’t the right word - but it is already quite intimate,” said Miles Potter, the play’s director. “It’s been 20 years since the play was done here. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.