A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Almeida Theatre

★★★★★

“a gem of a production”

Eugene O’Neill’s last play, A Moon For The Misbegotten, is now playing at the Almeida Theatre. With an outstanding cast that includes Michael Shannon, David Threlfall and Ruth Wilson, and direction by Rebecca Frecknall, don’t miss an opportunity to see it, if you can get a ticket. The play does require stamina, like a lot of O’Neill’s work. But if you’re up for the challenge, get ready to experience a profound catharsis, watching the playwright exorcise his family’s ghosts in the sequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

In the semi-autobiographical earlier play, we watch O’Neill explore his family’s legacy. In James Tyrone, he creates the figure of his father, one of the most successful actors in the United States. James’ wife Mary is the tragic figure hooked on drugs prescribed by an unscrupulous doctor. Mother to two boys, the elder Jamie is a pale shadow of his parents. He wants to follow in his father’s footsteps, but lacks his talent. Both men, however, have a talent for drinking alcohol. When O’Neill picks up Jamie’s story in A Moon For The Misbegotten many years later, he shows us a Jamie lost in grieving his mother’s death, and still trying to emulate his father’s success. But O’Neill doesn’t bring us to the sea haunted house of the earlier play, but to a hard scrabble tenant farm where Phil Hogan and his children scratch out a living among their wealthier neighbours. Phil is a blustering patriarch who also likes alcohol. He drives his children so relentlessly that, one by one, they leave the farm and go to seek their fortunes elsewhere. At the start of the play, his daughter Josie, a lot like her father, is nevertheless helping her youngest brother to escape. Mike accepts his sister’s help, all the while moralizing about her reputation with the local men. He suggests she try to entrap Jamie Tyrone in marriage. Josie and Jamie have long felt a fondness for each other. Jamie could be her ticket off the farm and away from their father, if she plays her cards right.

Sounds simple, right? Except that part of O’Neill’s genius as a playwright, is to present us with complex characters who see how to escape their inexorable fates, yet struggle with all their might to remain exactly as they are. (In real life, O’Neill’s family had better luck.) In Josie Hogan and Jamie Tyrone, we have two characters who can only grant each other absolution, rather than the love they desperately desire. In this production of A Moon For The Misbegotten, Rebecca Frecknall focuses on the seeking of these two. It is brought into sharp focus by an expressionistic lighting (Jack Knowles) that captures both the passing of the day into night, and the steady orb of the misbegotten moon. The farmhouse (set design Tom Soutt) has already crumbled to a cluster of planks and a solitary pillar, holding up a vanished porch. The music (NYX) and sound design (Peter Rice) reinforce the sense of a place that echoes a long, slow dissolution.

The actors have a rich environment in which to perform. Josie (Ruth Wilson) and her father Phil (David Threlfall) bluster and beat at each other, goading each other on. When Jamie Tyrone (Michael Shannon) arrives, it is to beg Josie to give up the role of the coarse woman of loose morals, and be the lover he wants her to be. Watching Threlfall, Wilson and Shannon work the angles of these complex characters is like watching poetry in motion. They find the rough lyricism of O’Neill’s words. They play the drama while keeping the audience sympathetic to these messed up individuals. If there is one incongruity, it is that Ruth Wilson is a much slighter version of the junoesque goddess O’Neill had in mind for Josie. When Jamie refers to her exuberant beauty we are very aware that Michael Shannon towers over her, when it should probably be the other way around.

But Wilson captures Josie’s spirit perfectly, and Shannon, as Jamie, spends a lot of his time wrapped around her, trying to resist the twin demons of alcohol and desire. Frecknall wisely focuses on punctuating the language of A Moon For The Misbegotten with physicality. Otherwise a modern audience might be overwhelmed by the words. Just as compelling is David Threlfall’s performance as Phil. As the rough Connecticut farmer, he bullies and wheedles, shouts and demands, but makes us believe he genuinely cares for Josie, and wants her to escape just as much as she does. Wilson and Threlfall delight in the multifaceted relationship of this father-daughter pairing, and the audience feeds off their energy. It’s essential, too, because the long scenes between Jamie and Josie are a slower burn—another long day’s journey into night, and the vivid dawn that follows. Michael Shannon is pitch perfect as Jamie. He shows us the source of Jamie’s pain, and takes us through the exorcism that follows. But it’s Wilson’s moment to pronounce absolution on her lover, and let him go.

This is a gem of a production, and it has award winning performances from the three main characters. You will want to see it at the Almeida, or hope it transfers.

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

★★★★★

Almeida Theatre

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Almeida Theatre

★★★★★

“a gem of a production”