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

Reviewed on 25th June 2025

by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Marc Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

1536 | ★★★★★ | May 2025

RHINOCEROS | ★★★★ | April 2025

OTHERLAND | ★★★★ | February 2025

WOMEN, BEWARE THE DEVIL | ★★★★ | February 2023

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

★★★★

“Max Jones’ excellent design, complemented by an arresting use of lighting is striking”

1536 is definitely innovative: it uses the backdrop of Anne Boleyn’s defamation and execution to demonstrate the impossibility of existing as a woman and the power imbalance exploited by men. Ava Pickett’s debut play, directed by Lyndsey Turner, is a triumph.

We open on an atmosphere of sticky heat in an unspectacular field somewhere in Essex. There is a hazy unreality cultivated through this trope: the kind of dizzying heat that encourages libidinous frenzy. We see it here, as three young women meet to gossip and philosophise, and occasionally, to fornicate.

1536, the year Boleyn was beheaded, uses her engineered fall from grace – though a distant event for the women of the piece – to eloquently illustrate a world engineered for men at the expense of women. With frightening speed, Boleyn is transformed from the coveted woman Henry VIII left the Catholic Church for, to a treasonous, witchy ‘whore’. It’s telling. And what it tells is that men all too quickly will vilify women to vindicate and validate themselves. It’s Simone de Beauvoir all over: men will wreak power over women in all respects, in order to rationalise their sense and need for superiority. And crucially, 1536 argues, no woman is safe; there is no protective status. Not even the Queen of England is immune. Nor is the ‘good’ and pious wife. Nor is the mistress who operates outside martial confines. It argues that women are trapped from all sides and threatened on a very real level by the imbalance of power that stems from the unchecked violence and physical power of men over women – an aspect that feels all too relevant.

The cast is wonderful, especially Liv Hill as ‘pious’ Jane, and Siena Kelly as Anna, the ferocious ‘whore’ to Jane’s ‘angel’ (an anachronistic dichotomy but only in technicality). Tanya Reynolds as the sensible but quietly suffering midwife Mariella is also very watchable, and the two supporting men (Adam Hugill and Angus Cooper) are equally strong.

All the action takes place in this singular outdoor space: a dry landscape, overwhelmed by tall reeds, and a solitary blasted tree. Max Jones’ excellent design, complemented by an arresting use of lighting (Jack Knowles) is striking. This pressure cooker could be monotonous, but instead, it draws attention to the geographical smallness of life for people, and especially women, in 16th Century England; it’s an excellent demonstration of the staticity of their lives.

There is one ostensibly minor, but jarring flaw. The modern vernacular works well, and is a fabulous vehicle for comedy. The swearing, however, is not. The number of expletives were obscene, with little drama or effect. They were merely staples of the dialogue. But they were arresting without power, cheapening the quality of the otherwise agile dialogue. It’s a trend emergent in much period theatre at the moment, and it always seems tacky.

Also, please, can we all agree to bring back the interval?

But these are small problems. 1536 navigates much, all whilst being hilarious. It’s also nuanced: whilst exploring gender politics, it examines how women can leverage their own power through sex, and yet (!!) this is the most easily weaponised facet, unifying men and women alike against the more sexually voracious woman. The world has visibly changed in 500 years, but 1536 questions just how much.

Tag Archives: Jack Knowles

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

★★★★★

Almeida Theatre

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

Almeida Theatre

★★★★★

“a gem of a production”