Date: Fri 13-Feb-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: DONNAM

Quick Words:

Moon-Misbegotten-O'Neill

Full Text:

(rev "Moon For The Misbegotten" @Danbury Theatre Co.)

Theatre Review--

O'Neill's `Moon' Packs A Punch In Danbury

(with cut)

By Julie Stern

DANBURY -- Eugene O'Neill is surely one of the greatest American playwrights.

Winner of both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes, he was popular in his time for

both his short plays about the sea -- based on his own experience in the

Merchant Marine -- and for his experimental reworking of Greek tragedies.

Desire Under the Elms , one such reworking, set the Phaedra myth on a bleak

New England farm.

It was only after his death that two plays which dealt explicitly with the

personal torment of his own dysfunctional family were published and produced.

These works were the Pulitzer-winning Long Day's Journey Into Night , and its

anguished sequel, A Moon for the Misbegotten .

Now in keeping with its tradition of tackling serious drama with intelligence

and style, the Danbury Theater Company has staged a powerful version of the

latter play. Cut from its original four-hour duration to a more manageable

length, Moon... focuses on the plight of two lonely people whose attempt to

connect is thwarted by the blight of guilt and alcoholic self-destruction.

Written as a sequel, this is the continued story of Jim Tyrone, an actor whose

life was shaped by his family's volatile combination of addiction, neuroses

and illness. The surface charm of the dashing Irish-American Tyrones masks a

deeper climate of dark secrets and bitter resentments that bound them together

in a mixture of need and hatred.

Now Jim has returned from New York to the family's Connecticut farm after his

mother's death. Worried that Jim might now sell the property to raise money,

his conniving tenant, Phil Hogan, pushes his daughter Josie to seduce Jim and

thereby get him to marry her. Josie really is in love with Jim, and arranges a

tryst.

However, as they sit together all night long in the moonlight, what comes out

is that Jim is too crippled emotionally, and too tormented by misery, to be

capable of any kind of relationship. The alcoholism that seems to produce his

jolly bonhomie is really an anesthetic needed to ease the pain of being alive.

Under William Wishbow's competent direction, the two principals do an

excellent job. Marguerite Foster makes an earthy, spirited, tender-hearted

Josie, who has faced a life of hard options with honesty and courage. It is

easy to see why she is drawn to Greg Swan's Jim Tyrone, who projects an image

of hearty warmth and attractiveness, even as he is clearly in pain.

Ashton Crosby is good as the irascible bullying widower, Phil Hogan, who

insults his neighbors, drives away his sons, and eventually uses the daughter

who cares for him as a tool for his own selfish ends. Ed Medvecky and the

interestingly renamed Brace Hanchard handled their smaller parts well, as the

son who escapes to Bridgeport and the wealthy neighbor who hopes to drive the

Hogans out.

With good lighting and a typical Danbury Theater Company professional quality

set, this play is intense and powerful stuff, and definitely worth seeing.

(Danbury Theatre Co.'s Moon for the Misbegotten continues performances through

February 28. Curtain is Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, with one Sunday

performance, at 7 pm, on February 15. The theatre is at St. James Church, 25

West Street. For ticket or additional information, call 790-1161.)