George M. Cohan wasn't kidding when he wrote the song about "a fine bunch of rubens" with "whiskers like hay" living only 45 minutes from Broadway. A hundred years ago that hit showtune lightly jabbed at the agricultural lifestyle that dominated the city's suburbs. But by the time The Jazz Age set Times Square ablaze with lights and non-stop excitement, the rise of industry in America's northeast led to the demise of the small farmer. Eugene O'Neill's A Moon For The Misbegotten, his last play to premiere in his lifetime, deals with an awkward attraction between an alcoholic Broadway boy (a character based on his brother Jamie) and a domineering farmer's daughter in a rural 1920's Connecticut that's just barely surviving.
Considered a sequel to Long Day's Journey Into Night and taking place twelve years after O'Neill's autobiographical masterwork, Moon deals with third-rate actor Jim Tyrone, Jr. (Kevin Spacey), landlord of farmer Phil Hogan (Colm Meaney), whose crass and hard-working daughter Josie (Eve Best) is hung up on the classy New York lad, even though her reputation for juggling men is known throughout the land. When Hogan tells his daughter he believes Tyrone plans to sell the farm and evict them he persuades Josie to help blackmail Jim by getting him drunk and seducing him so that her father may catch him in the act of taking advantage of his daughter.
Under a September moon, with Jim and Josie stripped of their personal armor, feelings of regret, self-loathing and love come to the surface, though where they will lead once dawn arises is questionable.
The strongest asset of director Howard Davies' production is the dynamic and heartfelt performance of Eve Best. Though not exactly a physical match for a role described as an "ugly overgrown lump of a woman", she moves with the gloriously unbridled gait of a bull in continual motion. Moments of deep longing and loneliness slowly seep through her defensive shell in a performance that appears remarkably authentic and natural.
Though Josie and Jim certainly come from different worlds, the baffling interpretation by Kevin Spacey as a juvenile Broadway dandy can make you wonder if they're also in different plays. It's not a bad performance by any means; just one that seems so out of place with everything else in the production. As he stamps the floor in elaborate hissy fits and polishes the air with hyper hand gestures you might wonder what on earth the hearty Josie sees in this guy. Quick changes of emotion seemed played like a vaudevillian's sharply timed gag, evoking inappropriate laughs. Perhaps the point is that Jim is always, to some degree, in performance. An interesting thought, but it didn't work for me.
Colm Meaney is excellent and quite engaging as the crafty and humorous Hogan, with a lovely gritty cadence to his brogue.
Bob Crowley's set pushes the main acting area beyond the proscenium, allowing more intimacy and creating a greater sense of loneliness against the barren surroundings upstage. The dilapidated farmhouse looks ready to fall over, along with severely weathered telephone poles.
This is certainly a briskly paced Moon; the wordy play coming in at just under three hours and with more legitimate laughs that you might expect. But this is a play that boils down to the chemistry between Jim and Josie and the production at the Brooks Atkinson may severely test your belief in opposites attracting.
Photos by Simon Annand: Top: Eve Best and Colm Meaney
Center: Eve Best and Kevin Spacey
Bottom: Colm Meaney and Kevin Spacey
