Ivo van Hove - Toneelgroep Amsterdam

Director Ivo van Hove has got a thing about Eugene O'Neill. In 2003 he directed the highly acclaimed 'Mourning Becomes Electra' for Toneelgroep Amsterdam, which he has headed since 2001. Prior to this, he staged 'Desire under the Elms' and 'More Stately Mansions' both at home and abroad. For his version of 'More Stately Mansions' for the New York Theatre Workshop he received the prestigious Obie Award in 1998. For Ivo van Hove, 'Long Day's Journey into Night' is the ultimate family tragedy: a portrait of four family members who are unable to live either with or without one another. As they battle addiction and demons from the past, they blame one another for all their missed chances and lost dreams. For 'Long Day's Journey into Night' (1942) the author Eugene O'Neill posthumously received his fourth Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Family ties, and a past we never fully deal with, are recurrent themes in his work, which is characterised by 'a realism of the soul'. 'Long Day's Journey into Night', set in the Tyrone family, is largely autobiographical. O'Neill also grew up in a family with Irish Catholic roots, one that was completely torn apart by morphine addiction and alcoholism. We follow the Tyrones at their beach house in Connecticut in 1912, during one long day that begins at 8.30 am and ends late at night.