The ecstasy is worth three hours of agony

THREE-AND-A-HALF HOURS of boozy agonising, Eugene O’Neill’s American masterpiece from 1941 is a serious challenge to the will to stay awake — never mind the will to live.

One reason for meeting that challenge is a stunning turn from Lesley Manville, Oscar-nominated with Daniel Day Lewis for the film Phantom Thread.

Manville plays a charming but fiercely deluded, opium-addicted housewife married to Jeremy Irons — a washed- out theatrical impresario. Of her two sons, one is a dedicated drunk, the other a literary waif suffering from potentially terminal tuberculosis.

The play charts a day in the life of the family niggling at each other’s self- delusions, but also propping them up for fear of being exposed.

Manville thrives on her character’s manic depression concocting stories of a joyous past at a convent school, while rueing her marriage to an itinerant thespian. Playful, witty and excitable, she is well matched by Irons as her grandiloquent skinflint husband ministering to her self-delusion with jaunty delusions of his own as a theatrical giant.

Both dress in the grand style, her fine bone-china complexion offset with silver and bronze fabrics, his sallow, skeletal physique offset by a floor-length gold dressing gown.

The acting in Richard Eyre’s doomy production is superb throughout, with Rob Howell’s staging setting them all in what looks like a sea-green, stained-glass cage enveloped by darkness.

Hard work, yes, but if you’re up for this long, dark journey, it’s terrific.