I don't feel that the reason I found this so difficult to enjoy or even appreciate fully was so much the fault of Sidney Lumet as the original writer, Eugene O'Neill. This is a fraught and depressing piece, suffering very much from changing times and values. Back in the fifties when this was written there may well have been families (Mr O'Neill's probably) that suffered in such a way, partly because an individual sense of ignorance and shame but more particularly the far too great a presence of the Catholic church. This was never really the case in England at the time and even in the US has far less significance. Certainly substance abuse has gone mainstream and for good or bad the misuse of prescription drugs appears common place in the US and certainly would not be considered such an central element in a family's destruction as seen here. Sad, depressing and thankfully more or less irrelevant. Katharine Hepburn seems made for the role while Ralph Richardson struggles with much of his nonsense lines.
