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Long Day’s Journey into Night
by Eugene O’Neill
Also on its Main Stage, Evis Gavrielides
Auditorium, THOC presented Eugene O’Neill’s
Long Day’s Journey into Night
on 2 June 2017
Eugene O’Neill’s classic masterpiece, a
landmark in the history of drama, touches
upon the deepest and ever-lasting troubling
issues of family, society and broken human
relationships. The central figures of the play
are the self-centred and stingy father James
Tyrone, a great actor who sacrifices his talent
for the sake of commercialism, the mother,
Mary Tyrone, a cultured woman who has
become a morphine addict, and their two sons,
James, who is an alcoholic, and Edmond who
suffers from tuberculosis.
For Yiannis Houvardas the play is: the
martyred but liberating journey of a family
towards the night, both in terms of time
but mainly in the existential sense, through
tormented confessions, horrific guilt, abysmal
hate, extreme self-sarcasm, psychological
cannibalism, and deep, heart-breaking love. It is
a theatrical concert for five finely-tuned organs
in a particularly sensitive key and a highly
demanding, acrobatic score. It is addressed
to all of us, because we all have skeletons in
the cupboards of our familial history and dark
corners in the depths of our souls and we all
yearn for Liberation from the unbearable
burden that we carry.”
O’Neill’s autobiographical play was first staged
3 years after his death and won a Pulitzer. It
was staged at THOC once before in 1978 under
the direction of Evi Gavriilides.
Translation: Nikos Gatsos
Dramaturgy and Direction: Yannis Houvardas
Set Design: Eva Manidaki
Costumes: Ioanna Tsami
Music collaboration: Dimosthenis Grivas
Dramaturgy collaboration: Eri Kirgia
Voice Teaching: Melina Paionidou
Lighting Design: Georgios Koukoumas
Assistant to the Director: Natassa Triantafylli
Assistant to the Set Designer: Thalia Melissa
Cast: Antonis Katsaris (James Tyrone), Reni
Pittaki (Mary Cavan Tyrone), Thanassis Dovris
(James Tyrone Junior), Aris Balis (Edmond
Tyrone), Iovi Fragkatou (Cathleen)