Rebecca Frecknall has given some surprising spins to the American canon with her refreshing and untraditional revivals. The surprise in the director’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s final play is that it is served up straight.
Frecknall has stepped back to let the play do the speaking but this faithfulness lays bare the datedness of the drama, which creaks with age at times. The production itself seems imbalanced too: glacial in pace, it stretches across three hours, not gathering enough intensity and chugging anti-climactically to its end.
