long day's journey 1962

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Long Day's Journey Into Night

• At the end of a long and hot summer day, members of one family gather in a large house. Everyone has something painful and offensive to say, and their silence is even worse.
• Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family. — Marc Andreu <[email protected]>
• The film spends one day and night with the dysfunctional Tyrone family. Mary Tyrone is an unstable mother addicted in morphine that recalls moments of her life in the past to escape from her reality. The Irish patriarch James Tyrone is a cheap and alcoholic man and former successful actor. The older son Jamie Tyrone is an alcoholic idle man that loves and envies his brother and is blamed by his mother for the death of his younger brother. Edmund Tyrone is an aspiring writer that has consumption (tuberculosis) and tried to commit suicide. — Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
• One day in the early twentieth century in the life of the outwardly "loving" yet dysfunctional Tyrone family - parents James and Mary, and their two surviving adult sons Jamie and Edmund - at their Connecticut seaside summer home is presented. Mary has recently been released from a sanatorium for addiction to morphine. She got hooked on it during the difficult pregnancy with Edmund. As such, she secretly blames him for her addiction. Although Mary is purportedly clean, the male members of the family can't help but believe that she is still getting her fixes when she is alone. Edmund, a mariner, also recently arrived home. They are all aware deep in their hearts that Edmund is suffering from consumption, and not a summer cold as they all say it is, as they await the official diagnosis. James, formerly an actor, is a spendthrift despite having money. He, however, is not unwilling to spend money on whiskey or get rich quick schemes, largely buying what ends up being worthless real estate. Jamie largely blames his father for not spending the money early in their illnesses for Mary and Edmund's health/medical problems. Otherwise, Jamie has largely been aimless in his life. He has followed in James' footsteps in becoming an actor solely because James gave him the opportunity, but places no effort in it as a career. In addition to these issues, all three male members of the family drink to excess. These family issues are played out as the long day turns into night... — Huggo
• Against the backdrop of a hot, humid, early-1900s August day, and the eerie sound of the foghorn, the tortured Tyrone family gathers at their summer house in Connecticut. Little by little, through an interminable series of bitter quarrels, unpleasant mood swings, and cruel love/hate alternations, the parsimonious former actor patriarch, James Tyrone Sr., watches the inevitable disintegration of his already dysfunctional family. More and more, as the emotionally unstable, substance-dependent mother, Mary, is on the verge of a mental breakdown, and her two boys, the embittered, resentful wastrel of a son, James, and his tuberculosis-stricken younger brother, Edmund, can't stay in the same room without a battle, an insidious undercurrent of lost faith and crippled happiness is tearing the family apart. And the long day's journey into the night can only bring pain, despair, and sorrow. — Nick Riganas

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Long Day's Journey Into Night

1962, Drama, 2h 54m

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Long day's journey into night   photos.

A quiet Connecticut vacation home is the backdrop for domestic decline. Sensitive son Edmund (Dean Stockwell) returns home from spending time at sea to a family in a state of collapse. His father (Ralph Richardson) is an alcoholic miser. His mother, Mary (Katharine Hepburn), is addicted to morphine. His brother, Jamie (Jason Robards), is aggressive and unstable. As Edmund and his brother clash over how to help their mother, she becomes increasingly concerned about Edmund's worsening health.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Sidney Lumet

Producer: Ely Landau , Jack J. Dreyfus Jr.

Release Date (Streaming): Nov 6, 2018

Runtime: 2h 54m

Production Co: First Company

Cast & Crew

Katharine Hepburn

Mary Tyrone

Ralph Richardson

James Tyrone

Jason Robards

Jamie Tyrone

Dean Stockwell

Edmund Tyrone

Jeanne Barr

Sidney Lumet

Jack J. Dreyfus Jr.

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Long Day's Journey Into Night

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, sidney lumet, katharine hepburn, ralph richardson, jason robards jr., dean stockwell, jeanne barr, photos & videos, technical specs.

On a warm day in 1912, the Tyrone family gathers at their summer home in New London, Connecticut. James, the father, is an aging popular actor whose early privations have led him to devote his career to a second-rate but commercially successful play. Mary, his convent-bred, Irish Catholic wife, has just returned from a sanitarium after supposedly being cured of drug addiction. Jamie, the eldest son, has made a half-hearted attempt to follow his father's profession but now is reduced to a life of alcoholism and cynicism. The youngest son, Edmund, a 23-year-old would-be writer, comes home penniless and ill after working as a merchant seaman. In the course of the day, Mary's fear that Edmund has tuberculosis causes her again to use morphine; and when the illness is confirmed, the family's repressed anguish, pride, and insecurity surface in bitter quarreling fueled by alcohol. The day ends as the three men sit and listen in silence as Mary lapses into her own private hell. They know that tomorrow it will all begin again.

Jack J. Dreyfus Jr.

George justin, boris kaufman, andré previn, ralph rosenblum, richard sylbert.

Award Nominations

Best actress, long day's journey into night.

Long Day's Journey into Night

Filmed in New York City. Also 180 and 176 min and eventually cut to 136 min for some engagements. Copyright claimant: First Co.

Miscellaneous Notes

Voted Best Actor (Robards, also for his work in "Tender Is the Night") and One of the Year's Ten Best Films by the 1962 National Board of Review.

Voted One of the Year's Ten Best Films by the 1962 New York Times Film Critics.

Winner of the Acting Ensemble Prize at the 1962 Cannes Film Festival.

Released in United States March 1975

Released in United States Winter January 1, 1962

Released in United States March 1975 (Shown at FILMEX: Los Angeles International Film Exposition (A Film Tribute to Nobel Prize-winning Authors) March 13-26, 1975.)

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Review: Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962)

Wesley Lovell

Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Source Material

Review There are great films and there are great plays, but melding the two is an often difficult task. So, when going into a nearly 3-hour film like Long Day’s Journey Into Night based on Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, you have to hope for more than just a stage-on-screen adaptation. However, if it weren’t for the astounding performances of the cast and the soundness of the material, this unequivocally stage-bound production would have been a painful experience.

The play centers around four members of an upper middle class family in a seaside Connecticut home where the foghorns plaintively punctuates the narrative both literally and figuratively. James Tyrone Sr (Ralph Richardson) is the patriarch of the family, an acclaimed actor in his day, is frequently lambasted for his frugality and defends himself with his tale of growing up in poverty. Mary Cavan Tyrone (Katharine Hepburn) is a melancholy woman constantly lamenting the past and attempting to relive the glory as an escape for the devastating saga surrounding her. James “Jamie” Tyrone Jr. (Jason Robards) is the eldest son and a perpetual troublemaker leeching off his father while plying his father’s profession and using it as a springboard to woo women and drink excessively. Edmund Tyrone (Dean Stockwell) suffers from a summer sickness, so his mother declares, that everyone suspects is consumption. His past excursions overseas are accused of causing his illness, but as the film plays on, everyone finds a way to blame someone else for his devastating state.

For me, Richardson is the weakest of the performers infusing his dialogue with the occasional Irish brogue but preferring to pontificate in a controlled Shakespearean dialect, a byproduct of his years on the stage where he was once declared as the perfect Othello. While entirely within reason for the character, it comes off pretentious quite frequently, which is at odds with the description of the character in the play. Stockwell acquits himself nicely against actors who seem significantly more trained. While he doesn’t seem the boisterous boy he’s described as being, he’s a sympathetic character that almost feels as if he’s from a completely different family, taking on few of his relations’ mannerisms or quirks, picking up the most unfortunate of them: the drink.

Robards is terrific as the drunken elder son, proclaiming his victory in teaching the young Edmund how to avoid all of the pitfalls he had already suffered and frequently going head-to-head with his miserly father. Their interplay is blended equally between outright hatred and grudging manners. He has most of the bombastic deliveries in the production, but never feels like he’s cresting the banks of good taste.

That leaves Hepburn who is simply outstanding. Although her early scenes are hard to watch, seeming to be too literally adapted from the stage, as she progersses into her moody despair and eventual drug-infused rambling late int he production, she kicks the performance into perfection, creating a genuinely troubled woman stuck in the past when her life was Utopian and fearful that her depression could lead to further trouble for the family, a fear which permeates most of the film.

Sidney Lumet gives the actors plenty of room to ply their trade, never letting the camera get in the way of the performance. Unfortunately, that proclivity keeps the film from feeling more robust and realistic. We are aware constantly that this is a stage production put onto the big screen. While there are a few exterior scenes that set the place, the interior is the key focus of the film and it is so sequestered that you can’t really understand why film was the necessary medium to which to bring this event. Review Written September 27, 2010

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One response to “Review: Long Day’s Journey Into Night (1962)”

It’s perfectly undestandable why – how many people can see a play in a theatre, and how many can see a movie at home? Those numbers just can’t be compared. If this move had not been made in this particular fashion, the wonderful O’Neil’s play would be forever lost for so many people worldwide.

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Long day's journey into night.

1962 Directed by Sidney Lumet

PRIDE... POWER... PASSION... PAIN!

Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family.

Katharine Hepburn Ralph Richardson Jason Robards Dean Stockwell Jeanne Barr

Director Director

Sidney Lumet

Producer Producer

Ely A. Landau

Writer Writer

Eugene O'Neill

Original Writer Original Writer

Editor editor.

Ralph Rosenblum

Cinematography Cinematography

Boris Kaufman

Executive Producers Exec. Producers

Joseph E. Levine Jack J. Dreyfus Jr.

Production Design Production Design

Richard Sylbert

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Gene Callahan

Composer Composer

André Previn

Sound Sound

Jim Shields

Costume Design Costume Design

Sophie Devine

Makeup Makeup

Herman Buchman

Hairstyling Hairstyling

First Company

Releases by Date

09 oct 1962, releases by country.

174 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★★ 5

Action! - Lumet/Pollack: The Fight of the Century

After viewing my first Lumet adaptation of an O'Neill play, I was encouraged to learn more about the author. And, in part, I suppose learning more about the playwright's life is more disheartening to me than not as I am not being able to enjoy his work, or at least the adaptations done by Lumet.

To be honest, I liked this one much more. The theatricality and use of a single setting, as well as several of the performances, reminded me a lot of Bergman's work. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if Lumet was influenced by the Swedish director for this picture, particularly in terms of blocking. Everyone had excellent performances, particularly…

Review by theironcupcake ★★★★★ 9

"Mary, for God's sake, forget the past!" "Why? How can I? The past is the present. It's the future too."

Curated Cupcake Cinema #17

Like Tolstoy famously wrote in Anna Karenina : happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

What do you do when home feels like a prison? Is it ever really "inconsiderate" to "dig up" the past? How long can you go on making allowances and loving people "in spite of everything"? Is that really love at all, when resentments fester and spread like an infection?

On occasion people derisively describe movies as theatrical, like that quality was inherently and automatically wrong when captured on film. But for me, when I treasure…

Review by Leighton Trent ★★★★ 4

Cupcake Curated Cinema - #17

There's such beauty in the breakdown. And there's nothing more American than the breakdown of the American family that still chooses to stay together despite its generational trauma.

Eugene O'Neill's posthumous published masterpiece is a hell of a downer. There's no getting around that. That it is incredibly biographical/personal is the reason for it (and, in my opinion, much more so than his other works) and honestly works better as a four act play, but because of who wrote it, and the fact that it was published after his death, it was more than ripe for a cinematic adaptation barely six years after it's initial publication.

Though I have watched this once before, probably going…

Review by nora ★★★★ 11

i read this play this summer and in my head mary was played by katharine hepburn (because of this adaptation) and edmund was played by jack nicholson (because he's the surrogate eugene o'neill character and not a day goes by where i'm not thinking about jack nicholson playing eugene o'neill in REDS). they gave excellent performances in my head. thankfully real katharine hepburn met my expectations and dean stockwell pulls off the impossible by making me abandon my brain's casting and accept that he is the true edmund. and it's not just because i think dean stockwell is a) one of the most beautiful people i have ever seen and b) giving off the same tortured mumbling emotional vibe that…

Review by 📀 Cammmalot 📀 ★★★½

Cinematic Time Capsule 1962 Marathon - Film #33

🎶 Dysfunction Junction, what's your gumption? Miserable words and phrases and clauses. Dysfunction Junction, how's that function? I got four family members That get most of my job done 🎶

And here it is! Nearly three hours of bitter, manipulative, passive aggresive, enablers who spend an entire day arguing, bellowing, pleading, drinking, drugging and excessively monologing each other to death.

I’m glad to have seen it, and Hepburn’s Oscar nom was well deserved, but man this film’s a depressing place to visit and I certainly wouldn’t want to live here.

🎶 I was happy in the haze of a dramatic play But heaven knows I'm miserable now I was looking for a film, and then I found a film And heaven knows I'm miserable now🎶

Cinematic Time Capsule - 1962 Ranked

The New York Times Book of Movies: The Essential 1,000 Films to See

Review by Zachary ★★★★★ 4

I'm always suspected of hoping for the worst, I got so I can't help it.

Long Day's Journey into Night is an expansive character drama adapted from Eugene O'Neill's Pullitzer Prize winning play - to borrow from Pauline Kael, the best film to be adapted from O'Neill's writing and also the man's finest written work. In the tradition of its source, all four lead actors would go on to win at Cannes, with Hepburn also claiming one of her 12 Best Actress Oscar nominations in the process. That pedigree speaks to the script's design to showcase its performers via weighty emotional roles and frequent allusory dalliances peppered in to give each thespian more Great Words to feast on. For those…

Review by Matt Heiser ★★★½

Maybe a little too overwritten and staged, the movie boasts some very good performances from the four main actors. Dean Stockwell seems to channel Montgomery Clift, and Jason Robards is very Bogart-esque. Richardson and Hepburn are also good. The movie also perhaps goes on a little too long, the bitterness gets exhausting after a while.

Review by Chaiclassics ★★★★ 2

Kate's performance is one of the best I have ever seen but this is sooo long 😭

Review by Hmel ★★★½ 5

A miserly alcoholic father who has enabled his wife's deepening morphine addiction attempts to keep his young son's tuberculosis diagnosis from her, with the help of his boozing, whore mongering older son who he constantly berates as a failure.

The type of uplifting family film Sunday afternoon's were made for...

The acting was absolutely first class in this adaptation of the autobiographical Eugene O'Neill stage play, and relies on three stellar performances from the four leads in this small cast, to hold the audiences attention for the nearly three hour runtime.

I had also just read Sidney Lumet's book, Making Movies, which was an excellent "fly on wall" account of the moviemaking process from start to finish. This was probably…

Review by Elizabeth 🥀 ★★★★

I still don't know how Katharine didn't win an Oscar for THIS role..

Review by Stephen M ★★★ 2

Watched via Curated Cupcake Cinema

On the one hand, we have a famous play by American dramatist Eugene O'Neill and a cast with sterling acting credentials. But my lord, such abject misery and family dysfunction for the entire 3 hour runtime! I must admit it wore me down with its relentless focus on long held resentments, lost illusions and self-pity, and a tendency to blame each other for their plight. All exacerbated by intergenerational alcoholism and addiction. Whew...

We watch a family in 1912 over the course of day in their oceanside home: James (Ralph Richardson), a retired stage actor preoccupied with losing money and turning often to drink, his morphine-addicted wife Mary (Katherine Hepburn) who lives in the past,…

Review by Zoë 🐝 ★★★★ 2

An exhausting three hour long argument between members of a dysfunctional family, a movie that feels its length while also not being slow or boring. It's definitely made more interesting by the fact that it is semi-autobiographical and all the trauma and sadness and exhaustion on screen is based on the difficult reality of lost love, illness, and addiction that surrounded playwright Eugene O'Neill when he was a young man (Dean Stockwell's character is the stand in for the young Eugene). It's a film very clearly based on a play; the length, writing, and the directing makes this clear, especially the directing (from cinematic heavyweight Sidney Lumet) which is very stagey to the point where this is really no more…

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A slice of life filled with regret, recrimination, drugs alcohol and despair written by the greatest American playwright about his family.  

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This magnificent autobiographical account of Eugene O'Neill's early years tells the story of a mother with a drug addiction, an embittered alcoholic father, and two maladjusted brothers. Based on Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey into Night."

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Over the course of one day in August 1912, the family of retired actor James Tyrone grapples with the morphine addiction of his wife Mary, the illness of their youngest son Edmund and the alcoholism and debauchery of their older son Jamie. As day turns into night, guilt, anger, despair, and regret threaten to destroy the family.

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LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT

Author Eugene O’Neill gives an autobiographical account of his explosive homelife, fused by a drug-addicted mother and a father who wallows in drink after realizing he is no longer a famous actor.

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Long Day’s Journey Into Night review: Brian Cox’s tyrannical Tyrone is a masterclass in impotent rage

The ‘succession’ star returns to his stage stomping ground, and it’s where he stomps best. alongside an extraordinary patricia clarkson, he owns the stage in jeremy herrin’s spare, bleak – and very long – revival of eugene o’neill’s masterpiece, article bookmarked.

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God, this is a miserable play. For three and a half hours, the four members of the Tyrone family – a morphine addict, two alcoholics and a consumptive – shout and mope and recriminate, and director Jeremy Herrin really leans into the misery in his bleak, spare production of Eugene O’Neill’s masterpiece.

So why would anyone want to sit through 210 minutes of such sustained despair? Well, first there’s the acting. It’s one of those plays that needs a mighty pair in the lead roles of James and Mary Tyrone, he a once-famous actor who is now a whiskey-guzzling miser, she a bitter morphine addict. Lesley Manville and Jeremy Irons have done it , so have Charles Dance and Jessica Lange. This time it’s over to American movie star Patricia Clarkson and the beast that is Brian Cox as James, with Cox reminding us all, after the success of Succession , that the stage is his old stomping ground – and it’s where he stomps best.

There’s also the fact that, 85 years after it was written, Long Day’s Journey remains an incredibly astute account of addiction and of the impact it has on a family. “I’ve become such a liar,” says Mary. “I never lied about anything once upon a time. Now I have to lie, especially to myself. One day, long ago, I found I could no longer call my soul my own.”

It’s such a big machine of a play that it takes a while for the wheels to start moving, but once the initial creaks and jerks are out of the way, it’s an unrelenting plummet. It’s all there in the desolation of Lizzie Clachan’s set, three recessing rooms that get gloomier the further back you go. The few bits of furniture are all scrubbed to bare pale wood, the walls a washed-out grey, the lighting increasingly weak and white. With so little there, the production becomes a kind of specimen box, the Tyrone family like creatures under a microscope – and we watch them drive themselves to despair. Herrin turns this into a showcase for Big Acting, with no distractions.

Cox makes Tyrone a tyrant, barking and roaring, flaring into rage at the slightest provocation, simmering down just as quickly, and all the while his family don’t pay him the slightest bit of notice. He rages, Lear-like, impotent, and just as quickly becomes a tender husband, staring with deep love into his wife’s eyes.

Clarkson, meanwhile, has an extraordinary ability to flitter in and out of reality, sometimes just with her eyes. One moment they’re piercing into the person she’s talking to, fully lucid; the next they’re staring blankly as she loses herself in her memories. With just a faint smile, she becomes almost diaphanous, a drifting, spectral presence on stage. You can’t keep your eyes off those two.

Laurie Kynaston and Daryl McCormack take on the roles of the sons, Edmund and Jamie – one a morbid poet, the other a self-loathing alcoholic actor. The way they draw on threads of their parents is clever: Kynaston’s Edmund has some of the swagger of his dad, while McCormack’s Jamie has the same inwardness as his mum. Meanwhile, Louisa Harland (Orla from Derry Girls ) does brilliantly as the Irish maid Cathleen, tuning down some of the elements that can make her character a comic stereotype.

By no means is this a perfect production. The stripped-back approach is really exposing, and there are moments when it doesn’t bear up to the scrutiny, especially in the whiskey-heavy later scenes. You miss the heft, too, when neither Cox nor Clarkson is on stage – less a criticism of the sons than a testament to the hypnotic skill of the parents – and some scenes in the second half feel bum-numbingly long. And it’s not exactly an enjoyable night out at the theatre, either. What it is, though, is very impressive, often mesmerising, and – when it hits right – profoundly moving.

Wyndham’s, until 8 June

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Critic’s Pick

Review: A Shorter ‘Long Day’s Journey,’ Now With N95s

The Eugene O’Neill classic, set in 1912, is just as powerful in Robert O’Hara’s revival, set in our own age of disease and lockdown.

By Jesse Green

Eugene O’Neill, whose insanely detailed stage directions for “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” specify even the titles of the books on the shelves, somehow forgot to mention the Purell. Also the N95s.

Yet there they are, prominent props in Robert O’Hara’s warp-speed Covid-era revival, which opened on Tuesday at the Minetta Lane Theater in Greenwich Village. Far from cheapening a classic work with random relevance, they help define (or at any rate don’t get in the way of) a beautifully acted and affecting interpretation for a new age of disease and lockdown.

In the Tyrone family, closely based on O’Neill’s, disease and lockdown are already a way of life. For James (Bill Camp) the disease is spiritual; a could-have-been Shakespearean who (like the playwright’s father) got trapped in an immensely popular melodrama, he is embittered by success and a skinflint by nature. His older son, Jamie (Jason Bowen), has just the opposite problem: A failure at everything, he beggars himself by carousing as if he weren’t.

For the other two members of the household, the disease is literal. Partway through the play, the younger son, Edmund (Ato Blankson-Wood), receives a diagnosis of tuberculosis from which he believes he will never recover. His mother, Mary (Elizabeth Marvel), having been improperly treated by a cheap doctor after Edmund’s difficult birth, is addicted to morphine. Her most recent rehabilitation miserably collapses over the course of the long day of the title.

That day, according to O’Neill, is in August 1912; the setting is the family’s fog-infested waterfront home on the Connecticut coast . There, James estivates sourly between tours, talking big and doing little, watching helplessly (or unwilling to help) as Mary’s fear for Edmund undoes her.

Her relapse is all the more painful because of the hypocrisy that informs it; it began, after all, as a result of James’s stinginess. And though the three men drink at least as insatiably as Mary drugs, only her addiction is seen as a character flaw: an elective humiliation that has turned them all into emotional — and nearly literal — hermits.

In O’Hara’s production, though, the Tyrone lockdown is only partly about shame; it is also about precaution. When Mary tells James that “this will soon be over,” and that his theater season — another tour of his tired old play — “will open again,” we hear it differently with our pandemic-primed expectations. How many productions have recently had to reassure us they will open again?

And all it takes to turn Edmund’s tuberculosis into Covid is the discreet suppression of the word “consumption” from Jamie’s question after his brother visits the doctor: “He thinks it’s … doesn’t he, Papa?” We fill in the blank as we please; the coughing is the same either way.

That’s successful if relatively minor surgery. But can a revision that cuts about half the text, reducing its running time from nearly four hours to slightly less than two, still be “Long Day’s Journey”? Certainly the O’Neill estate, which permitted the changes, thinks so, in part because O’Hara, as he writes in a program note, has not added “a single word” in the process of imagining “this glorious play into the future that we are all currently living through.” The contemporization is achieved entirely by suggestive or visual means.

At first, the effect is humorous, as when James shows up in cargo shorts bearing Starbucks and Mary, demonstrating her improved health, does yoga. Soon, though, the jokes deepen, creating a feeling of double vision as we notice both our time and O’Neill’s at once. The density makes a four-person play feel crowded; Clint Ramos’s living room set, littered with discarded Amazon delivery boxes, nails the relentless clutter of a self-indulgent family trapped together for months with no maid. (She too was cut.)

Nor do the house’s upper stories, as revealed through voids in the living room wall, offer relief from the creeping claustrophobia; in one of the openings we see Mary repeatedly shooting up. (To judge from the spoon and flame, she’s using heroin now instead of morphine.) If this, let alone her vomiting, feels too literal, the astonishing projections by Yee Eun Nam are almost phantasmagoric in their abstraction. They vividly suggest the solace that blossoms from the needle, a solace that is at least in part a dissociation from reality.

Yet we know that anyway; the play as typically performed demonstrates it over and over. Mary’s addiction is part of a closed system in which each of the Tyrones victimizes and is victimized by the rest, all the while explaining and apologizing and defending. (That’s part of what justifies its usual unusual length.) What O’Hara gets so right, regardless of the apparent setting, is the relentless rhythm of placation and perturbation. These are people who can’t help pulling one another’s scabs off, then trying to stick them back on.

If you want to think about our own recent lockdown in those terms, this production, even in its relative brevity, certainly allows you to. And if you want to think about what O’Hara meant by casting white actors as the Tyrone parents and Black actors as the sons — he says he meant nothing — you are welcome to do that too, though you probably won’t get very far beyond merit.

But if you aren’t interested in a contemporary medical or racial gloss, the great thing about this “Long Day’s Journey” is that you need only close your eyes. Indeed, because the revival has been produced by Audible, the Amazon company that creates spoken audio content, once the stage production closes on Feb. 20 that will be the only way you can experience it.

What I think you will find with the visual information stripped away is a very accomplished, and surprisingly faithful, reading of the play. If it loses some of its cumulative power in the abridgment, its moment-by-moment power often increases in recompense. Bowen and Blankson-Wood get the alternating current of the brothers’ connection just right. Camp, unlike many Jameses, plays the real man, not his melodramatic stage incarnation. These are performances that are not only stageworthy but streamworthy.

And certainly Marvel’s vocal characterization of the deteriorating Mary — lilting then wheedling then ratlike then hollow — is one you will not soon get out of your head. You may even feel infected by it. Do they make Purell for the ears?

Long Day’s Journey Into Night Through Feb. 20 at the Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan; audible.com/ep/minettalane . Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.

Jesse Green is the chief theater critic. Before joining The Times in 2017, he was the theater critic for New York magazine and a contributing editor. He is the author of a novel, “O Beautiful,” and a memoir, “The Velveteen Father.” More about Jesse Green

Long Day’s Journey into Night review: Brian Cox is out-acted by Patricia Clarkson

I t is as though the Roy family from Succession is mounting a benign takeover of the world’s premium centres of theatre. On Broadway, Jeremy Strong (Kendall) is starring in an Ibsen play, whereas here in London Sarah Snook (Shiv) has attracted a string of five-star reviews for her dazzling one-woman turn in The Portrait of Dorian Gray . And now it is time for paterfamilias Logan, aka Brian Cox , to take centre stage, in Eugene O’Neill’s unflinching modern classic about one family’s struggle with its multi-headed demons.

Long Day’s Journey is regularly cited as the definitive American drama of the 20th century. Be that as it may – my vote would go to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman – there can be no escaping the fact that the operative word of the title is “long”. The almost three-and-a-half hours of Jeremy Herrin’s production do weigh heavily, as the four members of the tormented Tyrone family, variously addicted to alcohol, drugs and self-delusion, each seek their own oblivion.

Initially, all seems to be proceeding Succession -style. James Tyrone (Cox), a touring actor, is strong, uncompromising and miserly with money; his sons Jamie ( Daryl McCormack ) and Edmund ( Laurie Kynaston ) lack his sense of direction and purpose. Mary (Patricia Clarkson), James’s peacemaker of a wife, floats intriguingly around.

Clarkson is magnificent, giving the performance of the evening, shaping Mary into a figure of almost ethereal radiance, present but also absent. She is, we gradually and painfully learn, a morphine addict, driven to drugs by grief and loneliness, while her husband and sons seek solace in long, whisky-fuelled sessions in bars.

Myles Frost is an eerily good Michael Jackson in MJ the Musical

The action takes place over the course of a day, and as the night draws in and the play’s four acts roll on, we settle into a sort of trance or fever dream with the Tyrones. A pattern is established, of brutal verbal lashing out by one family member at another, followed by instant repudiation and contrition; so often is this repeated that we begin to tire of it.

As James revisits childhood demons, Cox struggles to shift register sufficiently and convinces us a little less of the weight of the wounds he bears, especially in comparison to Clarkson’s deep mining of truth. That magnetic performer Kynaston beautifully captures young Edmund’s early-onset nihilism and aura of wasted potential, as the spectre of serious illness from tuberculosis looms.

Lizzie Clachan’s unlovely set of wood panels resembles an overgrown sauna, but is in keeping with Herrin’s admirable mission to interpolate no cheap flourishes of any kind into the production. All focus is on O’Neill’s mighty words about human fallibility, of how other people’s flaws and weaknesses always appear so much easier to fix than our own unquiet souls.

To 8 June at Wyndham’s Theatre , WC2 ( 0344 482 5151 )

Review: LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT, Wyndham's Theatre

The O'Neill classic brings Brian Cox back to the London stage

It's a slow burner, running three hours plus interval, but not a second is wasted in Jeremy Herrin 's fine production, which features a delicate showcase of addiction, longing, and despair from Patricia Clarkson as Mary, the wife and mother lost to morphine and her memories, fussing over her appearance and her youngest son, Edmund ( Laurie Kynaston ).

Edmund is fragile, physically weak and the baby who perhaps should not have been born, following close after a brother who died in infancy. His brother Jamie ( Daryl McCormack ) is morally weak, a drinker who has sunk into despondency and depravity to hide the truth of what's happening at home. The bond between the two is strong but uneasy.

If walls could talk this wooden cabin would have much to say. Expected to be a home for the Tyrones to thrive it feels more like their place of penance, where James Snr rations the light, the piano is rarely played, and the whisky bottle is constantly refilled with water to keep the level steady.

O'Neill's play is a great source of stories. Mary remembers the day, shy and star-struck, she sees the handsome James on stage and meets him backstage later, where they both fell instantly in love. Jamie recounts a tale of pity which happened to him in the local brothel. James recalls that it has been nearly forty years since the peak of his acting career, and has a scribbled note to prove it - somewhere.

Lizzie Clachan 's set and costumes capture the sense of a prosperous past while providing muted hues which fit well with Jack Knowles 's lighting. Much of the intense act four, much of it a two-hander between Cox and Kynaston, beautifully acted by both, is in semi-darkness, capturing the mood of this long, long night.

The music and sound by Tom Gibbons is atmospheric and unsettling, but sometimes overpowers Clarkson's monologues and a word or two is lost. There were also a couple of line stumbles, but that's a small matter when the meat of the play is this weighty, deep, and truthful. Conversations come back to where they started, but are they really saying what they need to say?

Long Day's Journey Into Night  is a good example of a play that needs to take time to grow, dropping little hints along the way of when this family could have been happy, could have captured a moment that didn't bring them to this crisis. It's a play which weighs its words and sees the story through each of the four character's eyes.

Its revival will allow both old friends of the play and new audiences to come along to enjoy four vibrant lead performances and a character bit from Louisa Harland , the long-suffering maid from 'the old country'.

The play is one in which O'Neill lays bare his own genesis (the play is autobiographical, and he did not wish it to ever be published or performed). It was succeeded by  Moon for the Misbegotten , the story of Jamie in later life, which was published in O'Neill's lifetime.  Long Day's Journey Into Night  is the mirror into which we can see our souls.

Long Day's Journey Into Night continues at the Wyndham's Theatre until 8 June.

Photo credits: Johan Persson

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The week in theatre: Long Day’s Journey Into Night; The Lover/The Collection; The Divine Mrs S – review

Wyndham’s London; Ustinov, Bath; Hampstead, London Brian Cox and, especially, Patricia Clarkson shine as dysfunctional parents in Eugene O’Neill’s autobiographical play, David Morrissey brings a bold new register to Pinter, and April De Angelis takes on Sarah Siddons

Long Day’s Journey Into Night shoulders itself on to the stage: shaggy, heavy-footed, a creature of the last century. Yet braying prophetically. Eugene O’Neill wrote the play between 1939 and 1941 as an act of “old sorrow, written in tears and blood”. He didn’t want it performed but his third wife, against his wishes, authorised a posthumous production in 1956. The rawly autobiographical work features a mother addicted to morphine, a father entranced by memories of himself as a classical actor, one tubercular and one alcoholic son; the pain of it can be gauged by the fact that a dead baby is called Eugene. It also provides an unforgettable image of an American mother: a “dope fiend” in a rocking chair.

Jeremy Herrin’s production is careful, slowly gathering – and three-and-a-half hours long. The opening scenes are muted, not so much anguished as anxious; Lizzie Clachan’s marine-coloured clapboard design is austere and confined. The great sound of the foghorn out at sea – the key note of a family adrift – is no more than a spectral whisper and the dialogue often falters; when power does switch on, it is at first in the monologues. Solo confessions are the motor of the play but they gain in intensity with a greater sense of family – of inherited and inescapable dysfunction – than there is here. The wounds look grave, not – as they should – fatal.

Yet, oh, the sheer force of writing and of acting: what other dramatist could have come up with the description of “fog people” for characters so stranded from reality and each other, so woozily dreaming about the past? Laurie Kynaston and Daryl McCormack come to spar convincingly as the two uneasily fond brothers. Louisa Harland, of Derry Girls , who was so strong recently in Ulster American , shines as the maid who sees the truth and laughs in its face. Still, the core of the drama is in the parents. Brian Cox, in braces and shirt sleeves, is strong and bluff, good on the hints of the old ham, yet too quick to fire up from the start: his own journey looks insufficiently long, and the echoes of his Succession role too evident (there is even a line about being trapped in a familiar role). Yet Patricia Clarkson brings exceptional subtlety to the role of the mother: lost, manipulative, lying. Delicately vague, she suddenly flashes into vehemence. She provides a heart-stopping moment at the end of the play, which O’Neill considered “the greatest scene I have ever written”. To deliver the final line – a moment of dreamlike radiance – she sits on the edge of the stage and swings her legs up. It is as if she were young again.

Harold Pinter wrote The Lover and The Collection for television, in the early 1960s. They might have been written to contrast with O’Neill’s drama. Short, stripped of explanation, motored by crisp exchanges not by monologues, they teasingly provide an argument for being slightly bewildered in the theatre.

Sex games are what is mainly happening. Not as in pampas grass and inflatable dolls (though some tom-tom drums are strangely suggestive). This is the winking and bullying, the joyful encouragement and crushing disappointment that couples inflict on each other, not only to gee up bedtime but to find out who they are.

These are more than period pieces but Lindsay Posner directs with an eye to perfect reconstruction of the era. Rightly, since Pinter’s intrigues, though renowned for verbal tautness, are also strewn with visual clues: a giveaway pair of high heels is crucial. The opening line of the evening – “Is your lover coming today?” – depends for its effect on being torpedoed into an utterly respectable sitting room. Peter McKintosh’s set and costumes are immaculate. In The Lover a couple playing a double game have a sofa with two headrests and two cigarette boxes. In The Collection Claudie Blakley is – what better for disguises – a fashion designer, in Mary Quantish bob and geometrically printed tunic. There are touches of Hockney in a vase of tulips.

Blakley uses the distinctive rasp of her voice like a cat’s tongue, caressing but not smooth. She is also excellent at what might be called the Angela Rayner moment, when she crosses her legs and makes the entire audience believe they hear the susurration of her stockings. Mathew Horne of Gavin and Stacey (“Gavin’s in it!” yelped an excited woman on her phone outside the theatre) is also very good: levelly, unreadably blank. And David Morrissey strikes a bold new register. He arrives in a three-piece suit, speaking as if his words too were waistcoated; the smile on his face might be that of a newscaster transmitting calm while about to announce a catastrophe. His slowly crumples into bewilderment. With jokes en route. There is less threat than usual with Pinter: here the playwright puts the spring into enigma.

April De Angelis, author 30 years ago of the vivacious Playhouse Creatures about 17th-century English actresses, has alighted on another rich theatrical subject in Sarah Siddons for her new play, The Divine Mrs S . Painted by Joshua Reynolds as the Tragic Muse in 1784, and said by William Hazlitt to excite not so much admiration as wonder, Siddons was an innovative performer and a celebrity caught in the snare of being a working mother at a time when actresses were routinely pawed by their bosses, and women who resisted niceness were considered mad. What time could that have been?

The casting of Rachael Stirling as Siddons puts fire into Anna Mackmin’s fitful production. Stirling draws audiences to her without being clammy. Her wit is instinctive, not simply in the delivery of lines but in the way she holds herself and moves, with a graceful spiralling. It is hard for her to demonstrate the new naturalism of Siddons’s acting, which looks less effortless in the age of the television mutter and twitch, but was a striking contrast to the ritualised 18th-century style demonstrated with panache by Dominic Rowan. As Siddons’s brother, John Philip Kemble, a theatre manager and actor, Rowan yodels his vowels and, with legs bandied and arm aloft, looks as if he is stuck in a perpetual fencing match.

Despite enjoyable episodes of backstage buoyancy, De Angelis’s research can too often be heard pacing heavily behind the action. In danger of being lost amid the whirl of women’s disappointments is the poet and playwright Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), who is commemorated with a plaque near the theatre. Convincingly presented as having been cheated of just acclaim as an “edgy” (De Angelis larks around cleverly with anachronisms) dramatist, Baillie is the most interesting character on stage. Incarnated by Eva Feiler with a fascinating bunched-up intensity, her body seems to be merely a provisional receptacle for the words that need to burst out of her.

Star ratings (out of five) Long Day’s Journey Into Night ★★★ The Lover/The Collection ★★★★ The Divine Mrs S ★★★

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is at the Wyndham’s theatre, London, until 8 June

The Lover/The Collection are at the Ustinov Studio, Bath, until 20 April

The Divine Mrs S is at the Hampstead theatre, London, until 27 April

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• Eugene O'Neill
• Patricia Clarkson
• Harold Pinter
• Mathew Horne
• David Morrissey

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Long Day's Journey into Night review: a 'challenging' play with 'superb' performances

Brian Cox gives a 'magnetic' performance as ageing actor James Tyrone

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In the ten years since Brian Cox last appeared on the London stage, he has "supercharged his fame", said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph – thanks to his TV role as Logan Roy, the domineering paterfamilias in Succession. It is apt, then, that he has now taken on "one of the mightiest father figures in the 20th-century American canon" – the ageing, bitter actor James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's autobiographical masterpiece. 

It's a famously long and challenging play, said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard . But Jeremy Herrin's production is "full of pathos and ruined grandeur", with uniformly superb performances. Cox is "magnetic as Tyrone, volcanic one moment, maudlin the next"; his "bombastic soliloquies" are "compelling". 

This play is set over one day in 1912 in a rundown summer home in Connecticut, where James and Mary Tyrone and their two adult sons have convened, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian . It's a "gruelling" experience, as "the family's points of weakness and pain" are revealed, but it's brought to vivid life by Herrin's "stark" production. Cox is "thrilling", but it's Patricia Clarkson as his "morphine fiend" wife who really shines, with a "true, infuriating, compassionate portrait of an addict". There's strong support from Laurie Kynaston as Edmund, a failed poet with tuberculosis, and Daryl McCormack as Jamie, a failed actor and drunk. "This is the ultimate family reckoning, with some light, but mostly shade."

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Alas, the strong performances can't prevent "long-winded confrontations and confessions from slipping into melodrama", as O'Neill "grinds us into submission" over an "achingly slow" evening, said Clive Davis in The Times . The final scene of this "workmanlike" production, where Mary delivers a "crushingly poignant" speech, is desperately moving.

"But it's a long time a-coming." It's a pity this great play wasn't given a more innovative staging, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out . While the works of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams have been much reinvented recently, O'Neill's seem resistant to change. This is a tender production, but something of "a museum piece".

Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2 (0344-482 5151). Until 8 June Running time: 3hrs ★★★

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‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ Review: Patricia Clarkson Illuminates an Uneven West End Production

By David Benedict

David Benedict

• ‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’ Review: Patricia Clarkson Illuminates an Uneven West End Production 1 week ago
• ‘Opening Night’ Review: Sheridan Smith’s Turn Cannot Save Ivo Van Hove and Rufus Wainwright’s Monotonous Musical Adaptation 2 weeks ago
• ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ Review: Sarah Snook Dazzles in a Flashy Stage-Meets-Screen Retelling 2 months ago

No one, wisely, has turned “A Long Day’s Journey Into Night” into an opera — not least because, arguably, Eugene O’Neill’s most famous play already is one. It features extended solo arias mixing memory and pain, and, excluding the maid’s comedy high notes, the near-negligible plot operates as a vocal quartet. The job of the conductor — or, rather, the director — is to weave and build the sound to maximum dramatic effect. Led by Brian Cox (“ Succession ”) and Patricia Clarkson , Jeremy Herrin’s West End cast of soloists is definitely strong. Overall, however, his production doesn’t fully sustain the tricky balancing act.

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Descending, through drink and exhaustion, to the state that is the closest he ever gets to insight about his controlling, miserly failure with his family, Cox is in fine form in this scene. Furious at the truth-telling of his combative younger son Edmund (Laurie Kynaston) he allows us to see a man just about able — for brief moments only — to glimpse the truth of his own responsibility in the terrible family psychodrama.

But the slow-burn arc of the role isn’t quite within his grasp. His opening scene is pitched too high: The family is self-consciously acting happy now that matriarch Mary (Patricia Clarkson) is home and sober, but Cox’s overly-signaled brightness militates against audience engagement.

The consumption killing Kynaston’s nicely considered Edmund is, mercifully, underplayed. He gently indicates sadness without overstating it and in the final showdown with his father, his self-possession works in balance to his father’s chaos. But elsewhere, like most of the characters in this production except Louisa Harland’s beautifully judged, knowing maid, he seems too isolated, as if playing the end of the play from the beginning.

Neurasthenic, fluttering and fragile, Clarkson’s Mary positively glides through the day of the play with a sweetness that beautifully belies her pain within. Her level of denial is so absolute that she is able to maintain dignity throughout, no matter how upsettingly empty her illusions are.

Herrin knows about secrets and lies in dramas of addiction, having directed Duncan MacMillan’s scorching, award-winning “People, Places, Things.” Here, his pacing of Clarkson’s performance is the strongest line through this production. His handling of her final moments, ultimately placing her calmly sitting on the edge of the stage, is masterly.

Elsewhere, not all of his choices are helpful to so drawn-out a text. Lizzie Clachan’s self-consciously bald, wooden set over-emphasizes the lack of money that James gives to the running of a household. More of a statement than a helpful design, it leaves the creation of atmosphere to the actors and the lighting. Even a lighting designer as skilled as Jack Knowles struggles with the demand.

In a play that goes to some length to point out the intrusive sound of fog horns, it seems antithetical to have so noticeable an additional soundscape that loudly alerts the audience to approaching doom, or to the ethereal quality of Mary’s blissed-out-on-morphine state. This soundscape fires up some moments but flattens out the following scenes. The irony of this is that in so notoriously wordy a play, it’s absence and, crucially, silence which have proved so lethal in their lives.

The cumulative power of a still horribly recognizable journey through desperate, misplaced hope has ensured the longevity of O’Neill’s drama. Despite the unevenness of this production, Clarkson’s tender glow keeps it alive.

Wyndham’s Theatre, London; 780 seats; top £95 ($119), top premium £195 ($245). Opened, reviewed, Apr. 2, 2024; closing Jun 8. Running time: 3 HOURS, 30 MINS.

• Production: A Second Half Productions presentation of a play in two acts by Eugene O’Neill.
• Crew: Directed by Jeremy Herrin. Sets and costumes, Lizzie Clachan; lighting, Jack Knowles; music and sound, Tom Gibbons; movement, Polly Bennett, production stage manager, Laura Draper.
• Cast: Brian Cox, Patricia Clarkson, Laurie Kynaston, Daryl McCormack, Louisa Harland.

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Total solar eclipse 2024: Where, when, and how to watch

People in North America will be able to witness a total solar eclipse on April 8 as the moon completely blocks the sun.

Millions of people across North America will get the chance to experience a very special natural event on Monday when a total solar eclipse will be visible from parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada.

The total eclipse – which occurs when the moon completely blocks out the sun – will darken skies for a few minutes “as if it were dawn or dusk”, the US’s NASA space agency explains.

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It will be visible from a 185km-wide (115 mile-wide) band that stretches from the western coast of Mexico, through the US, and up to Canada’s easternmost province of Newfoundland and Labrador – what’s known as the “path of totality”.

“Weather permitting, people along the path of totality will see the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, which is usually obscured by the bright face of the sun,” NASA says on its website.

The path of totality is really “where it’s at” on Monday, said Anthony Aveni, professor emeritus at Colgate University in New York and author of the book, In the Shadow of the Moon: The Science, Magic, and Mystery of Solar Eclipses.

“It’s that precious three minutes or so … of totality when you see a whole range of phenomena that you just don’t see in everyday life,” he told Al Jazeera. “It takes your breath away and you stop what you’re doing and gawk at nature.”

So how often do total solar eclipses occur? How long does it typically last? Where and how can you watch safely? Here’s everything you need to know.

Where will the total eclipse be visible from, and at what time?

Monday’s total eclipse will be visible from parts of Mexico, the US and Canada.

It will enter continental North America in Mazatlan, in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, at 11:07am local time (18:07 GMT). It will exit the continent on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, Canada, at 5:16pm local time (19:46 GMT).

In the US, the eclipse will enter the state of Texas at 1:27pm local time (18:27 GMT) and exit in Maine at 3:35pm local time (19:35 GMT).

It will last only a few minutes, and the exact time it will be visible depends on where you are within the path of totality.

For example, in Erie, Pennsylvania, totality starts at 3:16pm local time (19:16 GMT) and ends at 3:20pm (19:20 GMT).

It will reach Buffalo, New York, a few minutes later: there, totality starts at 3:18pm local time (19:18 GMT) and ends at 3:22pm (19:22 GMT).

A partial eclipse also will be visible for about two hours on Monday, before and after totality.

What happens during a total solar eclipse?

While the Earth and moon both orbit the sun, the moon also circles the Earth each month.

During a total solar eclipse, the moon passes directly between the sun and the Earth, completely blocking the sun’s light on one side, and casting a shadow on a small area of Earth on its other side.

The dark inner part – the “umbra” – of this shadow creates a narrow track or “path” as the moon orbits the Earth. Areas on this path, and especially on its centreline, which fall directly under the shadow, are the ones from where the total eclipse will be visible.

This track is about 160km (100 miles) wide and 16,000km (10,000 miles) long.

“If it was a lunar eclipse, it would last for a few hours and people around the world could see it. But the difference is that total eclipses only happen over a specific path of that new moon,” said Khady Adama Ndao, a NASA eclipse ambassador.

This eclipse only occurs during a new moon. And the moon’s position in its orbit, relative to the sun and Earth, as well as the angles of all three at a specific time, are what create a total eclipse.

While the moon will be close enough to Earth so as to look as though it entirely covers the sun during an eclipse, in reality the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun. It’s the increased distance between the moon and the sun at the time of a total eclipse that makes the moon look like it is big enough to cover the sun.

Meanwhile, people who are close to the path of totality, but not directly in it, may see what’s known as a partial eclipse on Monday. That’s when only a part of the sun is obscured by the moon.

Areas from which a partial eclipse will be visible fall under faint parts of the moon’s wider shadow, called the “penumbra”.

What does a total eclipse look like?

As the moon moves past the sun during an eclipse, it will slowly obscure the sun – creating a dark sky – before reaching the moment of “totality”. That’s when almost the entirety of the sun will be covered, leaving only a faint circle of the sun’s light or the corona.

After a few minutes, people in the path of totality will see a partial eclipse again as the moon moves away. The sun will become fully visible again.

What else happens during the moment of totality?

There is a drop in temperature and animals also start to behave as if it’s nighttime.

The chirping patterns of birds may change, while nocturnal animals such as bats and owls may start to wake up and look for prey.

Stars and celestial objects hanging in the dark sky may also become more visible.

If a person were to stand on the moon or a space station orbiting Earth, they would also be able to see a dark shadow passing over the Earth.

How long will the total solar eclipse last on April 8?

A total solar eclipse can last between two to three hours, from the moment the moon first begins to cover the sun, until the time the moon crosses past the sun and stops obscuring it.

However, the period of totality in most places this year will last only between three and a half to four minutes.

Areas on and very close to the centreline will experience the longest period of totality while totality will last for shorter periods of time in areas farther from the centreline.

The longest period of totality on Monday – 4 minutes and 28 seconds – will occur near Torreon, Mexico. That’s because the area is closest to the point at which the shadow’s path is perpendicular to the Earth’s surface and near the central line of the umbral shadow.

In the past, totality in some places has lasted for as little as a few seconds, and as long as seven and a half minutes.

The durations of the eclipse and the period of totality differ due to a combination of factors, such as the curvature of the Earth and angle at which the moon’s shadow strikes.

Mobile applications such as “Totality” track eclipse start and end times, as well as totality durations for different cities on the total eclipse’s path.

What are some of the cultural and historical beliefs around total solar eclipses?

Total solar eclipses have captivated people for thousands of years. But in ancient civilisations, the phenomenon was often viewed as a bad omen.

In ancient China, for example, people believed that solar eclipses happened because “a celestial dragon” was eating the sun, according to NASA . As a result, people made loud noises during eclipses “to frighten the dragon away”.

The Inca people of South America believed solar eclipses were a sign of the sun god Inti’s anger.

And in ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq), a solar eclipse was thought to signal that the ruler was in grave danger – leading decision-makers to put a system in place known as the “substitute king”.

In order to prevent the real Assyrian king, for example, from being harmed, a substitute would be dressed up and ultimately offered as a sacrifice “for the evil fate that was destined for the true king”, explained Sarah Graff , a curator in the Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

According to Aveni at Colgate University, there is a tendency to view people in the past as being less intelligent or more superstitious about eclipses than people today. “But in every case, it’s an occasion to have a conversation,” he told Al Jazeera.

For instance, people made noise in the ancient Andean world during an eclipse “to alert the sun not to believe what the moon is whispering in his ear, which is that we people that live down here on Earth do bad things at night”, Aveni said. “This becomes an occasion to have a discussion about lying – that’s really what it’s about.”

Can you watch a total solar eclipse without glasses?

Experts stress that safety is critical.

During the brief time in which the moon completely blocks out the sun, people can view the total eclipse with their naked eye.

But during the partial eclipse before and after totality, you should use specially designed, protective solar glasses or a handheld solar viewing device.

“If people look without the proper protection, they run the risk of injuring their eyes,” said B Ralph Chou , president of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

“And if they get an injury, depending on how often and how long they look at the sun without the protection, they do have a substantial risk of developing a permanent loss of vision.”

This risk is due to a number of factors such as the intensity and radiation of the sun’s light, as well as the absence of pain receptors in the eye, which makes it easier to stare for too long.

Compared with a regular day, pupils may also be less dilated during an eclipse, making the bright light that enters more dangerous. “It’s like being in the dark, when all of a sudden, someone just flashes a flashlight in front of your eyes”, Ndao, the NASA eclipse ambassador, said.

How are people preparing?

Cities and towns across the path of totality have been distributing eclipse glasses to residents in the weeks leading up to Monday’s event. Museums, science centres and other institutions are holding viewing parties.

Schools in the US and Canada have announced closures on Monday to allow students to participate in eclipse-watching events. The closures also aim to avoid safety issues, as schools have raised concerns that the total eclipse coincides with school dismissal times.

Groups of people are also flying in private planes to watch the totality, said Barbara Gruber, assistant director of education and public outreach at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the US.

While this is permitted, the US Federal Aviation Authority has put out safety advisories about flying during totality.

Are you guaranteed to see the total eclipse if you’re in the path of totality?

Unfortunately not. Weather conditions will play an important factor in what hopeful eclipse-watchers will be able to see on Monday.

In other words, if it’s cloudy, that could ruin the visibility.

If you’re not in North America, several institutions will be hosting live coverage of the total eclipse, including NASA .

How often does a total solar eclipse happen?

While Monday may be the last time the US sees an eclipse for at least another nine years, a total solar eclipse generally occurs every 18 months.

Many total eclipses are only visible at sea and may not be seen by anyone at all, according to Ndao.

Additionally, once a particular area experiences a total eclipse, it may not see the return of the phenomenon for hundreds of years.

“On average a single location will experience a total solar eclipse about every 350 years, but averages can be misleading and some lucky places will get an eclipse in just a few years”, Gruber told Al Jazeera.

When is the next total solar eclipse?

The next total solar eclipse will take place on August 12, 2026, over Greenland, Iceland, and Spain. Almost exactly a year later, on August 2, 2027, one will be visible from northern Africa, Gibraltar, and the Saudi peninsula.

In the US, the next total eclipse will occur in 2033 but will only be visible from Alaska.

Western Canada, Montana and North Dakota will witness a total eclipse in 2044 and, the following year, people in the US will be able to see a total eclipse from coast to coast, according to NRAO.

Experts say a day will come, however, when total eclipses will stop occurring altogether – but not for quite a while.

As the universe expands with the moon moving further away from the Earth each year, and the sun gets bigger, the moon will eventually become too small in the sky to block the whole sun.

That day is still a distant reality though. A NASA study in 2017 estimated that total eclipses would end in 563 million years.