BROADWAY SNAP-SHOT
by Russell Bouthiller

Dateline: April 29, 2007

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

"A TOUCH OF THE POET, LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT and DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, all such lyrical titles, conjuring up images of alienation, addiction and despair. These are the sketches in bold strokes of America's foremost playwright, Eugene O'Neill, Nobel laureate and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner. A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, perhaps his most mellifluous appellation, achieves no less in drama as these other great works and, in this latest Broadway production, receives the boundless expression the play deserves."

That's what I had to say seven years ago when director Daniel Sullivan presented O'Neill's A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, which starred the incomparable Cherry Jones and the entrancing Gabriel Byrne. In its current revival directed by Howard Davies, the strokes are no less bold and the work is no less O'Neill. Still, the results are quite different.

For openers, there is the opening. Looking at the stage of the Brooks Atkinson Theatre one sees a detailed set designed by Bob Crowley with a tumbledown shack set on a broad, arid plateau. Connecticut has rocky and rolling landscape; green in summer and gray in winter. I recall vividly Eugene Lee's wonderful set in the Sullivan production and how beautifully it captured this essence. In this current revival, Crowley seems to have made every effort to distance himself from Lee's conception and moves us more towards a Sam Shepard time zone.

Still, it is the play and its players that make a work of theatre come to life. Two-time Oscar winner, Kevin Spacey, portrays Jim Tyrone, a character modeled after the playwright's real-life brother and first introduced in his LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT. London darling, Eve Best, wrestles the role of Josie, the not-so-good-looking daughter of Phil Hogan, played by Colm Meaney. Best and Meaney earned Olivier nominations for The Old Vic Theatre Company's production where Spacey serves as artistic director.

Spacey's take on the hard-drinking Tyrone is one that accentuates the character's charms and failings. When he's giddy and silly, Spacey plays it with board, animated sweeps, emphasizing Tyrone's boyishness. And, when he moves into darker corners, his passions are equally forceful. This Jim Tyrone is a man in a great hurry to get away from himself.

Spacey's blistering temperature radiates to his female opposite, Eve Best. As rushed and hurried Tyrone seems to be, Best's Josie counters with barefaced gruffness. (She comes off a bit like Katharine Hepburn in her "Spitfire" misfire.) Describing herself as "a big, rough, ugly cow of a woman," Best is anything but that. In fact, she's sports enough cleavage to distract all eyes from her dish-pan hands.

Colm Meaney does a fine turn as the cagey father who tries to finagle his daughter and landlord into a moonlit tryst. Billy Carter offers good comic flair as T. Stedman Harder, the prospective buyer of the Hogan homestead. And, Eugene O'Hare ably dispenses with the brief appearance of Mike Hogan.

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN is a complex play that plumbs the depths of troubled souls. Davies' direction is crisp and well-paced and his company of actors carries a powerful drama. Still, the lingering memory of the fine Cherry Jones/Gabriel Byrne production eclipses this one.