Chicago Tribune - Recommended
"...Great plays shouldn't be avoided -- their brilliance helps all productions along. And in this case, you're seeing a sincere rendition that manages to illuminate at least some of the script's myriad observations of the condition of the American family under stress."
Chicago Sun Times - Recommended
"...Michael Patrick Thornton's staging of the work takes a while to settle into its proper rhythm. But when it finally starts to hit its mark, well into the evening's second half, it grows ever more fascinating. Even those who have seen this play before might hear or sense certain things about it for the first time."
Daily Herald - Recommended
"...Eugene O'Neill's unflinching, sadly eloquent tragedy about a fractured family. A lifetime of pain, recrimination, guilt, denial and resentment is compressed into one prolonged day in the life of the Tyrones, pulled down into oblivion by meaness, booze and drug-addiction. Harsh and powerful, it remains a must-see for theater lovers."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"...in Gift Theatre's nearly four-hour production, directed by Michael Patrick Thornton, every glance and tic is freighted with dread. "She's watching us watching her," observes alcoholic Jamie Tyrone of his morphine-addicted mother, Mary (a splendid Alexandra Main), as she slides into a self-induced fog, spidery fingers plucking at her dress. Gary Wingert peels back the layers of parsimonious patriarch James Tyrone to reveal his paralyzing terror of poverty and soul-killing disappointment in life, and Brendan Donaldson and John Kelly Connolly as his sons, Edmund and Jamie, make the last act emotionally devastating."
Windy City Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Long Day’s Journey Into Night is at heart Edmund’s play, the story of O’Neill himself—a poet struggling to break free of his family’s stifling demons. Donaldson has flashes of resonance, particularly in some of his third-act scenes with Connolly. But he never evokes a sense of the bone-loneliness in Edmund, or of the character’s fathoms-deep artistic frustration."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Although Gift member Donaldson makes another vivid and surprising impression here as the quiet, consumption-addled young O'Neill stand-in, the rest of the cast doesn't match him. You can see a real fading matinee idol in dishy, silver-haired Wingert, but the white-hot fury of a stubborn man who refuses to admit what he's squandered."
ChicagoCritic - Highly Recommended
"...Kudos to the craftsmanship of the folks at The Gift Theatre for nailing a classic. It is a wonderful experience to spend an evening enjoying beautiful language played marvelously in an intimate setting. I almost asked them to pour me a whiskey."
