Eugene O’Neill’s 1941 play Moon for the Misbegotten takes us back to that ugly time a decade earlier when the wealthy had lost their way and the poor lived precarious lives, many of them seeking escape in dreams and alcohol.
The performance opens with Mike Hogan (Pater Corboy) in a bit of a panic, making his exit from the harsh life on the family's farm, hoping to join his brother Thomas, who escaped some years before. His older sister Josie gives him some of her father’s money to help him on his journey. When he hesitates about accepting it, she points out that it is part of the wages for his work that he never received.
That leaves her and her father Phil (David Threlfall) to try and make something out of the barely functioning farm. Phil’s solution is to get Josie to marry Jim Tyrone, the owner of the land, and there are genuine reasons of love which make that solution appeal to Josie, a strong-minded character.
Josie, Phil and Jim all live performatively as a way of survival. Phil masks himself and his intentions behind a supposed alcoholic daze (something you can still see among the lads in many a London pub). Jim is more truly an alcoholic on the run from confused guilt about his family and a life of wealth without purpose. Josie allows herself a reputation as a free woman, easily attracting and leaving men.
She is a woman who survives as a strong figure in a world where men often define women as mothers and lovers. We first meet her in farm overalls, and she is the centre of the story, barely ever off the stage for three hours, even if the story is very much from Eugene O’Neill’s male point of view.
The bare, minimal staging of Rebecca Frecknall’s usual expressionist tilt seems tuned to the lyrical realism of the play and its dialogue, which gradually reveals the reality of their frustrated lives. There are no distractions in this production, such as occurred with her Streetcar intrusions of a dancing figure and sudden heavy drumming.
A confident, visually distinctive cast delivers the humour and the general shape of a text about difficult lives in a fractured society. However, Rebecca seems less sharp with the layers of meaning to the characters, making the show seem a little repetitive and causing one of the actors to occasionally rush lines together so fast that it can be difficult to catch where one word ends and another begins.
This is a watchable, entertaining performance of one of the plays that helped shape world theatre and will quickly sell out.