I coined a new term during Act IV of the current revival of Long Day’s Journey into Night. “Subjunctive” acting: I’m not sure how useful it is. I’m not even sure how seriously I mean it. I was watching Brian Dennehy and Robert Sean Leonard (as James and Edmund Tyrone) go head to head—to whatever extent Eugene O’Neill’s characters ever actually go head to head—and thinking about how all through the play we’d been looking at two acting styles, one from Dennehy and Vanessa Redgrave and another from Leonard and Philip Seymour Hoffman. I was thinking how antithetical they were Continue reading

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