World Premiere of Long Days

Legacy Theatre in Branford

By: Karen Isaacs - Jun 25, 2025

The closing night of a show can be fraught with emotions. Cast and crew members have worked hard for weeks through rehearsals and performances. Friendships and feuds have developed.

Add in an emotionally demanding play such as Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, and everything is intensified.

That is the premise behind the world premiere of Long Days now at the Legacy Theatre in Branford through Sunday, June 29.

The idea is promising, but playwright Gabe McKinley has crammed in too many coincidences and backstories that are revealed too late in the play.

You might expect multiple parallels between the play and the events that occur off-stage. That these parallels are lacking is a missed opportunity. After all, why use the O’Neill play at all if no parallels exist? Any other play could have been substituted.

If you don’t remember the O’Neill classic, it is about the Tyrone family. The father is a successful but unfulfilled actor, his wife is a drug addict, and their two sons —  Jamie (a failed actor) and Edmund, who is dying of consumption — are each confronting demons. While the wife (Mary) chooses morphine, alcohol is the drug of choice for the rest of the family.

Long Days is set at a small theater company, operated by Jack, who both directs and stars in the production. The cast includes his twentyish son, Wes; a promising young actor (Bobby); Vic, the stage manager who also plays the maid; and Sue, a professional actress who is returning to her hometown.  The similarities between the cast and the play are minimal – Sue is a recovering alcoholic, and Wes is not sure he wants to follow in his father’s footsteps.

Before the curtain rises on the last performance, we discover some of the interconnections between the characters. Sue had been a close friend of Jack and his wife. Wes is attracted to both Sue and Vic, and Bobby plans on going to NYC for further training. It is later in Act Two that more important revelations about the characters are revealed. Like many modern plays, a homosexual relationship or two is included.

The reality is that Long Days makes no real points about the play or even the actors. They could be a group of doctors and nurses, or coworkers in any field.

I saw the very first performance, so I assume that the slow pace of act one will have picked up as the cast gets more comfortable.

Jamie Burnett has created a realistic green room for the actors to gather; his lighting is also very good. Jimmy Johansmeyer created costumes for the show-within-the-show and the cast before the show.

Director Michael Hogan has a very good cast to work with. Both Rod Brogan as Jack and Stefanie E. Frame as Sue mine the depths of their characters. Brogan subtly foreshadows some of the Act Two revelations. Dan Frye as Wes is burdened with having an Edmund-like cough that is not really explained. Thomas Rudden as Bobby, is similarly burdened; at the beginning, it seems he is uninterested in a theater career and not a very good actor, but all that is reversed in Act Two.

Hogan, perhaps, could have helped McKinley reduce some of the contradictions in the script.

The two-act, two-hour (with intermission) play is intriguing, but it could have been so much more.

Tickets are available at LegacyTheatreCT.org

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