Of what interest is O'Neill today?
Elmar Goerden's production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night
When Elmar Goerden asked himself the question, “What is of interest about O’Neill today?”, many answers came to his mind, especially with regard to Long Day’s Journey into Night. The “apparent difficulties” associated with the American dramatist, whose popularity today is limited, are for Goerden not only a challenge but constitute, in a way, “the true quality of his work”. He says: “I am fascinated by the way these characters get tied up in knots through their own fault. The drama has the inner power of a Greek tragedy but the external form of a nasty little family affair.”
Elmar Goerden is one of those young directors who base their work on a very precise reading of the text. Eschewing external trappings and refusing to dally with the Zeitgeist, he plunges deep into the work itself and peels back layer after layer of composition till he arrives at the core that is meaningful and valid even for today’s audiences. “O’Neill’s play is built upon much older foundations; like the Oresteia of mythology, this family is doomed to disaster. I do not purport to set the events – for me in no way a superficial American story – in the forties or fifties, or give the play an arbitrary, modern interpretation. My sole intention is to examine what it has to say to us in the year 2004.” The rather outmoded garrulousness for which O’Neill’s plays are often criticised only raises the “important question” for Goerden as to “how far the obvious waffling that surrounds the really important issues constitutes a vital clue to the way these people are constituted”. “There are,” he tells us, “powerful sub-texts at work here. I am extremely interested in examining them and making them visible to all.”
Goerden began his stage career in the early nineties at the Berliner Schaubühne. There he worked as assistant director to Andrea Breth, Luc Bondy, Robert Wilson and Peter Stein and made his debut as chief director in 1994 with Shepard’s Fool for Love. When Friedrich Schirmer invited him to the State Theater in Stuttgart in 1996, he immediately caused a sensation with his first production. He “dug up” a Gothic play called Blunt, or The Guest by Goethe’s contemporary Karl Philipp Moritz, and developed it into a kind of slow-motion nightmare where, as one critic put it, “the terror kept intensifying until it virtually became incarnate mental anguish”. The production was invited to the Berlin Theatre Festival.
Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt
As resident director in Friedrich Schirmer’s successful team in Stuttgart he thereafter produced a wide selection of works, ranging from Chekhov to Schiller and from Ibsen to Bernhard. In 2001 he moved to Dieter Dorn at the Residenz Theater in Munich where he was also resident director. Though he staged Shakespeare, Lessing and modern dramatists from Handke to Schimmelpfennig, he remained true to his penchant for resurrecting older works.
Karin Kathrein
Eugene O’Neill
EINES LANGEN TAGES REISE IN DIE NACHT
New production (performed in German)
Stage director Elmar Goerden
Sets Sylvia Merlo · Ulf Stengl
Costumes Lydia Kirchleitner
Lighting design Falk Hampel
Music Matteo Fargeon
Dramaturge Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle
James Tyrone Helmut Griem • Mary Cavane Tyrone Cornelia Froboess • James Tyrone jr. Sohn Rainer Bock • Edmund Tyrone Jens Harzer • Cathleen Franziska Rieck
Premiere 14 August 2004, 7 p.m.
Further performances 16 and 17 August, 7 p.m. · 18 August, 8 p.m. · 19, 20, 22, 23, 25 and 26 August, 7 p.m.
Landestheater
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Production photos © Karl Forster