ROUNDABOUT BLOG

Colby Minifie

Actress Colby Minifie, who plays Cathleen in our upcoming production of Long Day's Journey Into Night, visited the former house of Eugene O'Neill and his family in preparation for her role. She recounts her experience below:

The first time I visited the Monte Cristo Cottage, I had yet to read or see a production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night or Ah, Wilderness!, the two Eugene O’Neill plays set in his childhood summer home. I had yet to imagine Mary Tyrone (i.e. Ella O’Neill) wandering the upstairs hallways and cramped rooms alone and mourning a feeling of home. I didn’t picture the three men of the house, James, Jamie, or Edmund (i.e. Eugene), bounding around the downstairs rooms drunk with whiskey and raging about their collective loss of ambition. I merely saw the bare bones of a house built for a family I knew nothing about. Upon being cast as Cathleen, the O’Neill’s Irish maid in the playwright’s most autobiographical play, I realized I had to return to the Monte Cristo Cottage and wander the rooms with a deepened knowledge of the play and O’Neill’s life under my belt.

The Monte Cristo Cottage

The house came alive for me. When I pulled up to the cottage in New London, CT, the first thing I noticed was that the front hedges James and Jamie Tyrone cut during the morning of the ‘long day’ in August were meager and scrappy compared to what they must have looked like in 1912 when they were well tended. The house looks grand from the outside, with a wrap-around porch and a large staircase suited for great entrances and exits. The Count of Monte Cristo star, James O’Neill, built the summerhouse for his family, and there is evidence of his theatricality in the bones of the place. Once inside, I was struck by how high the ceilings are on the ground floor – they are disproportionately high to the small footprint of the rooms. To compensate, the ceilings on the second floor are crushingly low and the windows extremely close to the floor, perhaps indicating James’ miserliness, or just his preoccupation with appearances.

James and Mary's bedroom with the windows close to the floor

The second floor, which houses the three bedrooms, the spare room made infamous in Long Day’s Journey..., and the single bathroom, evokes the inescapable claustrophobia the family must have felt during their summers in the house. The hall between the three rooms is narrow and cramped. Ella and James’ room is the largest but at the back of the house and with one window. Down the hall is Jamie’s room; an odd-shaped room with the bed in its own alcove, suspended over the eaves of the house, echoing the notion that the 33-year-old alcoholic Jamie is barely hanging on. Eugene’s room is clearly the nicest and has the best light with two walls of windows looking out onto the sea, a life-long infatuation. The spare room, to which Mary retreats in her throes of addiction, stands across from Jamie’s room and next to Eugene’s. The floors creak in the otherwise quiet house so her retreating to the spare room does not go unnoticed.

Eugene O'Neill's room

The family room is the loveliest room in the house. It was repurposed from a one-room schoolhouse into, what is claimed to be, the first family room in New England. The walls and ceiling are paneled with honey-colored wood, and three of the walls are lined with windows. The sun streams through from the bay and basks the room in a warm golden light. There are two bookcases in the room and, judging from the descriptions of the contents of each bookcase in both Long Day’s Journey… and Ah, Wilderness!, one belongs to James and one to Eugene; the former filled with Shakespeare and Hugo, the latter with Nietzsche and Ibsen. Considering the rooms’ schoolhouse history and the literary knowledge lining its walls, it feels like a breeding ground for intellectual discussion.

The family room where LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT takes place

When reading Long Day’s Journey..., the old cottage seams barely able to contain the play. I think about how O’Neill could not enter this house after his family died, about how it lay in disrepair, untouched for years. I think about the tragedy that two of his children committed suicide and his third child, Oona O’Neill, he cut off completely. I think about O’Neill’s wish that this play, “written in tears and blood,” not be published until 25 years after his death and his wish for it never to be produced theatrically. And I feel grateful that I am able to inhabit this house for a little while. The house of the four haunted Tyrones.

Eugene O'Neill graffiti on the banister

Long Day’s Journey Into Night begins performances at the American Airlines Theatre on April 3. For more information and tickets, please visit our website.