O'Neill classic on stage at Northwestern

The drama is set in 1912 and dramatizes 16 hours at the summer home of the Tyrones. Northwestern theatre professor Bob Hubbard, who acts in the play, calls it “a powerful drama about addiction and family love.”

The characters—parents James and Mary and brothers Jamie and Edmund—are autobiographical representations of O’Neill’s family. Financially successful yet creatively unfulfilled, James struggles to hold together his dysfunctional family. Jamie suffers from severe alcoholism while Edmund, the character based on O’Neill, battles a mysterious illness. As the day fades into night, the entire family must come to terms with Mary’s relapse into morphine addiction.

Long Day’s Journey into Night was published in 1956—after O’Neill’s death, as he requested. Its Broadway debut earned a Tony Award for Best Play. The following year it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Eastcheap company founders and Northwestern theatre professors Jeff Barker and Karen Bohm Barker will play James and Mary Tyrone in the play. Hubbard has the role of Jamie, and Northwestern senior Brady Greer Huffman will play Edmund. Lois Estell, who graduated in 2006, is Cathleen, the family’s summer maid. The production is being directed by April Hubbard, theatre professor at Dordt College.

Tickets for Long Day’s Journey into Night are $5 and will be available at the door Sept. 4–6, beginning at 6:45 p.m. Seating will be first come, first served.