A world premiere play, Long Days, is currently onstage at the Legacy Theatre in Branford. Props to one of Connecticut’s newer theatres for opening their fifth season with Gabe McKinley’s promising new play. Audiences may want to brush up on Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night before taking in McKinley’s comedy, which is inspired by and echoes that playwright’s masterpiece…for better or worse.
The first act of Long Days does a good job of introducing these characters and letting the audience eaves-drop on what goes on behind the scenes when the curtain goes up. Even though it is billed as a “backstage comedy”, McKinley leans towards the serious by the second act and parallels O’Neill’s characters with his. This is sometimes interesting and other times way too obvious for its own good. If you can’t guess Jack’s big secret, you just haven’t been paying attention and McKinley gives Sue the kind of long, sad closing monologue that her onstage counterpart, Mary Tyrone, would be comfortable delivering. By the time actions heat up in the second act, the play dissolves into confusion with an ending that left my audience in stunned silence as things literally fell apart.
Set in the early 1990s in the dressing room area of a rundown, struggling theatre company that is NOT (as the playbill informs us) located in New York City, Long Days occurs during the final performance of the O’Neill classic as it examines the various entanglements between the five cast members. Leading the company is Jack (a fine Rod Brogan), who not only runs the theatre but directs and acts in most of the plays. He’s a familiar type in theatre circles, that of the over-the-hill, almost famous big-fish-in-a-tiny-theatre-pond. His bluster masks some deep secrets he somehow has kept from his lunkheaded son, Wes (Dan Frye) who is playing Jamie, his son in the O’Neill play, along with the more talented, Bobby (Thomas Rudden) playing the sickly Edmond. The diva of the production is Sue (Stefanie E. Frame), who is diddling with Wes offstage and has a lone Broadway credit that makes her the envy of the company. The put-upon stage manager, Vic (Aniya Taylor), who pines for Wes and also plays the housekeeper in the play-within-the-play, rounds out the cast.
Director Michael Hogan elicits strong performances from both Brogan and Frame who expertly portray the kind on actors living on the fringes of notoriety. Frame does an admirable job with that final monologue, even as the writing threatens to overwhelm her. As the young men, Frye and Rudden both excel as counterparts to the actual O’Neill characters. Only Taylor reads as unconvincing in a rather thankless role. She also seems to be the least-busy stage manager I’ve ever seen in a theatre.
Talented set and lighting designer Jamie Burnett fills the backstage with great theatrical details, making this particular space very much a place that has seen better days. There is also a choreography credit for Keely Baisden Knudsen (Legacy’s busy Executive Artistic Director) for a dance she creates at the top of act two. It is well done, but the addition of it here is nearly as baffling as the play’s closing moments. This is where cutting should be considered. In all, I do applaud Legacy for making room in their season for new work, even if it’s not quite ready for its close up.
Long Days continues at the Legacy Theatre, 128 Thimble Island Road in Branford, Connecticut through June 29th. For further information visit: www.legacytheatrect.org and or call the box office at: 203.315.1901.
Tom Holehan is one of the founders of the Connecticut Critics Circle, a frequent contributor to WPKN Radio’s “State of the Arts” program and the Stratford Crier, and Artistic Director of Stratford’s Square One Theatre Company. He welcomes comments at: tholehan@yahoo.com. His reviews and other theatre information can be found on the Connecticut Critics Circle website: www.ctcritics.org.
