The Long Approach, the four-act drama from playwright Vera Holst, opened on Broadway last night to the kind of sustained standing ovation that, for new plays of its scale, is genuinely meaningful rather than reflexive. The play arrives after a careful eight-month out-of-town run that has clearly tightened it into the form it now occupies.

The play's central work

The play follows three generations of a family across approximately fifty years, with the structural device of having all four acts take place in the same room. The constraint is the play's principal craft achievement; the room becomes a fifth character, accumulating the visual evidence of time across the four acts in ways that a more mobile staging would lose.

The performances

The cast of nine is anchored by a performance from Helena Marsh as the family matriarch that ages across the play through subtler choices than the more obvious physical-transformation route. Marsh's work is the kind of performance that the form, on its best nights, makes possible.

The supporting work

The supporting work is uniformly strong. The five performers playing the younger generations across the four acts have been chosen with visible care for the resemblances and the differences that the play's structural logic depends on. Several of the supporting performers carry their own award-quality work in specific scenes.

The direction

The direction by Tomas Lindqvist favours the kind of theatrical patience that the form's most ambitious work has always required. Long scenes are allowed to develop without the kind of staging movement that contemporary direction often imposes on extended dialogue.

What this is, and what it isn't

The Long Approach is a serious new play in a Broadway season that has, by most measures, been more concerned with revivals and adaptations. The play is not a commercial blockbuster and is unlikely to run as long as the most commercial productions of the season; it is, however, the kind of work that the form's longer-cycle reputation depends on.