Ullmann Joins LONG DAYS JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

According to the Wall Street Journal, Liv Ullmann has joined the Norwegian cast of Eugene O'Neill's LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. The Tony and Academy Award winning actress has been recently focusing on directing movies and stage productions.  Ullmann's broadway credits include: ANNIE CHRISTIE, A DOLL'S HOUSE, GHOSTS,  and I REMEMBER MAMA.

In the play, actor James Tyrone, his wife Mary and their two adult sons, Jamie and Edmund, have taken up residence for the summer at their holiday home in Connecticut. During the course of the 'long day' of the play's title this family battles to unearth, and conceal, a series of appalling truths. O'Neill's own life reflects those depicted in Long Day's Journey, providing for intimate scrutiny into the real life of one of America's most treasured playwrights.

EuGene O'Neill finished Long Day's Journey Into Night in 1942 and gave a sealed copy to Random House stipulating that it not be published for 25 years. He went so far as to have a formal contract drawn up in 1945. The rights to the play were given to Yale University by O'Neill's third wife, Carlotta Monterey, thus releasing it to the public. In 1956, three years after O'Neill's death, the play was first published. Long Day's Journey Into Night has its world premiere in 1956 in Stockholm and went on to be produced several times within the 25-year timeframe. In 1957, O'Neill posthumously received the Pulitzer Prize for the work.

Like the characters in the play, O'Neill grew up on the road; his father a traveling actor, his mother tormented with illusions and his older brother a bitter alcoholic. O'Neill characterized himself as a disillusioned idealist on the path toward death. The abiding familial love, addiction and overwhelming disappointment throughout the play provide agonizing dramatic fodder as reserve dissolves and emotions escalate. Character truths, flaws and insights are revealed about O'Neill's own life, as the play's Tyrone family struggles to confront lifetimes of resentment and misplaced love.

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