A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN
by Anthony Chase, ARTVOICE

The current Irish Classical Theatre production of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, directed by Brother Augustine Towey, C.M., is handsomely staged and has been given a first-rate cast featuring Catherine Eaton, Brian Riggs, Gerry Maher, Lawrence Rowswell and Tim Eimiller.

Set in a rundown farmhouse in Connecticut, 1923, this late O’Neill play focuses on Phil Hogan, a conniving rascal of a tenant farmer; his daughter Josie, who possesses the strength and feminine charm of a man; and their landlord, the charismatic but tragically flawed James Tyrone, Jr. Detecting an attraction between his daughter and wealthy Tyrone, old Hogan schemes to get the two married. Through his manipulations, the pair stays up one moonlit night, sparring and exploring the truths of their lives. When it’s all over, Josie realizes that her beloved James is a dead man walking, and that any union between them is impossible.

In a previous season with the Irish Classical Theatre, Miss Eaton, who makes her home in New York City, distinguished herself with a remarkable performance in Bryan Delaney’s play, The Cobbler, and was recognized with a Katharine Cornell award for her effort. Here she imbues Josie with equal doses of spirit and motherly compassion in a superb rendering of the role. Brian Riggs, who specializes in flawed Irishmen, gives an affecting and clearly articulated performance as charismatic but self-destructive Tyrone. Maher continues to astound with every role, and, with Hogan, gives a performance that is at once hilarious and poignant.

It took a long time for this, among the last of O’Neill’s scripts, to be staged successfully. The Broadway debut in 1957, four years after the playwright’s death, was a flop, even with a star as distinguished as Wendy Hiller. It was not until the 1973 Broadway version, directed by José Quintero, that A Moon for the Misbegotten would be heralded as a masterwork, the equal of O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night, for which it serves as a kind of sequel. In that production, Colleen Dewhurst played Josie and Jason Robards played James Tyrone, Jr. Ed Flanders played old Phil Hogan. (Buffalonians may recall that Quintero had previously staged the piece in 1965 as the opening production of the newly established Studio Arena Theatre, also starring Dewhurst, on that occasion opposite James Daly).

Quintero was regarded as the definitive interpreter of O’Neill’s work. His innovative insight for A Moon for the Misbegotten, according to reviews of the time, was in his interpretation of the James Tyrone, Jr. character. Previous readings had looked upon the play as a piece about father and daughter. Quintero saw the play as a piece about Josie and James. Moreover, he did not see James as the suave Broadway swell originally portrayed by Franchot Tone (a Niagara Falls native and one-time husband to Joan Crawford). Instead, what distinguished Jason Robards’ performance was that he played the man as an incurable drunk, tormented by the demons of his past and fated to self-destruction. When Josie sees through the surface charm, she realizes that her love cannot rescue him and resigns herself to a life without him.

The play is constructed in four acts. The first plays as pure comedy, and this is performed to complete perfection on the Andrews stage. The second and the third follow two distinct but contiguous actions: First, assuming Tyrone has forgotten a promised date with Josie that night, old Hogan and Josie devise a plot to punish him for selling their tenant farm; then, when Tyrone actually does make an appearance, he reveals his story to Josie. The moment that separates the two acts is the instant when Josie goes into the house for the bottle of whiskey and Tyrone momentarily reveals himself with an outpouring of anguish. This act is entirely about Tyrone telling his story, and every bit of sparring in between is merely a complication of that larger action. Once the story is told, everything else in the play falls into place. In the final act, Josie sends Tyrone on his doomed way, and she and her father resolve the issues of the play.

Brother Augustine makes excellent use of the circular Andrews Theatre space, with the audience on all sides. His cast is able and appealing, and the final act, like the first, is perfection. The combined middle acts, however, meander and seem long. There are moments of inspiration and brilliant acting, but the through-line of this middle territory is unclear. The production redeems itself in the end, of course, and the audience is left with the exhilaration that comes from having seen fine acting in a profound and moving play.

“Moon for the Misbegotten”

… just down the street from Studio Arena, the Irish Classical Theatre Compay has taken one of the finest plays from our nation’s cultural history, put it into the hands of one of our area’s most talented directors and cast it with some of the finest actors in the community.

Best of all, they give you until Sunday, Dec. 2 to catch a performance.

Eugene O’Neill is one of the greatest American writers of all time.  One of his specialties is the study of lies.

Each of us lives amid a constant conflict between the truth and lies, he would tell you.  People lie to each other, and they lie to themselves.  Somewhere deep in their souls, they know they’re lying but the truth is often so painful that they cling to the lies.

We use alcohol, drugs and other mind-altering substances as an excuse for all the lying.  “I was so drunk, I didn’t know what I was saying,” we tell ourselves.  But, somewhere we know the truth, and it gnaws at us and haunts us.

“Moon for the Misbegotten” is set among the family which has come to represent the playwright’s own family.  He calls them the Tyrones.

When the curtain rises, we meet Josie Hogan and her younger brother, Michael.  Josie is in the process of helping Michael run away from the family’s Connecticut farm.  We learn they have two older brothers, and Josie helped each of them to escape from their family’s life of poverty and their widowed father’s selfish and tyrannical ways.

Josie is a big, strong, unattractive woman the script tells us over and over.  Although the casting of lovely Catherine Eaton makes us consider that Josie’s unattractiveness is one of those fabled lies which she tells herself to justify her making a place for herself, the way she has done for her brothers. 

The Hogans are tenants of the wealthy Tyrones, and Josie has grown up as a playmate of James Tyrone.  James is an actor, as was his father, although perhaps he isn’t nearly as talented as his father.

On the other hand, perhaps his father has just told him he isn’t as talented so many times he has come to believe it.

Somewhere inside, James knows that Josie is a good woman, who will bring him more strength, more support and more happiness than any other woman he has met, yet James continues to chase around with the slender, graceful and very available women he has met in the theatre.

In Act II, Josie and James meet in the moonlighted yard of her dirt poor farm to see if she can convince herself that she isn’t unworthy of him and if he can convince himself that she has value, vastly beyond that of the commonly-understood.

Brother Augustine Towey directed the piece, maintaining a swift pace and keeping herd beautifully over the endlessly flowing ideas which get spoken aloud as well as those which we can deduce from what is said and done.

My only negative impression was that far too often in the in-the-round Andrews Theatre, in which the company performs, the couple sits with their backs to the same side of the audience for far too long.  This shuts those seated on that side away from facial expressions and the face-to-face immediacy which is live theatre’s greatest strength.

Brian Riggs met the challenge of portraying Tryone, showing us a man so disgusted by his own life that his greatest desire is to die.  Tyrone’s dancing around in Josie’s yard is a study of a man forcing himself to swim away from an offered life preserver, and that’s hard to make believable and he does it.

Gerry Maher is perfect as Josie’s hard-drinking, little strutting rooster of an Irish father.  O’Neill dares to suggest that that Hogan’s sons are better off away from him, and that somewhere in himself he has been cruel to them in order to drive them away for their own good.  Maher dares to suggest that somewhere inside himself this man knows this fact, while at the same time he doesn’t believe it.  It’s not as odd as it sounds.

The ICTC has promised to present five O’Neill masterpieces in five consecutive seasons.  This is the second of five, and they’ll have to work very hard to equal it in the remaining three. 

I know there are people who don’t want to kow who they are, what they are or what they should be.  ICTC is offering you deep insights from one of the greatest writers in history.  I recommend it with fervor.