Murder in the Wings

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By the time we reached the second act the audience was well aware of what was going on.

Stephen Wade, the television star who was playing the role of the father in this version of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night, was so drunk that he was knocking against furniture and quite often forgetting his lines. Between acts he had been given coffee and a quick walk in the cold, damp May night, but neither had seemed to help much.

I wasn’t quite sure how to feel. Because this was the first really serious play I’d ever been in, and because my performance as the drunken elder brother, James Tyrone, Sr., depended so much on what Wade did, I was angry most of the time I was on stage. But then I’d look closely at Wade, at the matinee-idol good looks that had slipped into white hair and booze-loosened flesh, and I’d feel sorry for him. There was a grief in his blue eyes that overwhelmed me sometimes and I sensed a man destroyed and left empty.

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