Miles to Babylon

Eugene O’Neill was not kind to his mother in his memoir drama, Long Day’s Journey into Night, depicting her as a hapless morphine addict with no hope of recovery. Fifty years later, Ann Harson presents a gentler portrait punctuated with courage in her play, Miles to Babylon. In Harson’s version, Ella chooses to face her addiction at the Catholic boarding school she had attended as a girl, where she had become close to the head nun. She is shocked to learn that her mentor had died and been replaced by her schoolgirl rival. The new Reverend Mother seems as concerned with extracting money from the wealthy Mrs. O’Neill as helping to fight her disease.