Last Wednesday, at the last minute and pretty much on a whim, Chris and his boyfriend and I went to see Long Day’s Journey Into Night at the Lyric Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue. If I’m honest, this trip had much more to do with the celebrity cast than the play itself.
So, fittingly, I’m not going to talk too much about the play, except to say that I think certain aspects of it will resonate with anyone with a vaguely disfunctional family-life. I’m not going to say much about the performances either (Paul Nicholls was surprisingly good, Paul Rudd was slightly disappointing, Jessica Lange made the best of an unbelieveably irritating part and Charles Dance was quite clearly the star of the piece).
But there was something astonishingly strange about seeing these people in the flesh in such a personal piece. You feel you have a connection with them – like you’ve both just gone through something together – something that you’d like to discuss with them. But of course from their perspective, you basically haven’t.. There’s something duplicitous about the relationship. I came out wanting to take Paul Rudd out for a drink, but knowing that that was an absurdity. That it wasn’t going to happen. Celebrity is a strange, strange beast.