THEATER : Grueling ‘Long Day’ Can Drain Actors Before Night’s Show

“Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” Eugene O’Neill’s painfully autobiographical account of his family’s descent and disintegration, can be an emotionally draining experience for actors as well as audience.

“You don’t want to have too many days where you have an afternoon and an evening performance,” said Jules Aaron, who directed the GroveShakespeare production now at the Gem Theatre in Garden Grove.

As director, one of Aaron’s most difficult tasks was to set the emotional tone for each stage of the play, which takes place during one day in 1912 in the life of the Tyrone family, based closely on O’Neill’s own.

“The hardest thing is the arc of the show, to make sure it builds properly,” Aaron said. “The first act has to have all the light levels. It’s still possible that things could go right. If the first act gets angry or tense, there’s no place to go” emotionally.

Aaron is a longtime GroveShakespeare regular who directed two works in the company’s outdoor Shakespeare season this year. Two contrasts he noticed in going from Shakespeare to “Long Day’s Journey” were the “detailing of a small play” and the “complexity of the actor work.”

The director had some highly experienced cast members to work with in this production, the first time he has directed “Long Day’s Journey.” Mitchell Ryan and Salome Jens, playing the parents, are veteran stage actors who appeared together in a landmark revival of O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” in 1968. Alan Feinstein, who plays older brother, Jamie, is another veteran actor.

Relative newcomer Morgan Rusler plays Edmund, the younger brother who faces tuberculosis along with the alcoholism of his quarreling brother and father and his mother’s relapse into morphine addiction. Another young actor, Alice Cunningham, has several scenes as the Irish maid Cathleen.

“Alice and Morgan have been really thrilled (by) working with” Jens and Ryan, Aaron said. “Also, the two of them (Jens and Ryan) are really team players. They are actors who don’t have much ego. . . .

“You really need the sense of ensemble. It’s not any specific story, it’s the group. . . . This has been one of the most satisfying experiences I’ve had with a group of actors.”

What: Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”

When: Wednesday through Saturday, 8 p.m.; Sunday, 3 p.m. Ends Oct. 31.

Where: Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove.

Whereabouts: Take the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, exit at Euclid Avenue, head north. Go left onto Garden Grove Avenue and right onto Main Street.

Wherewithal: $18 to $22.

Where to call: (714) 636-7213.