Review: A Moon for the Misbegotten
Fresh off their stint in Philadelphia, Walnut Street Theatre brings A Moon for the Misbegotten to Purdue’s Loeb Playhouse on Thursday, February 18.
Tim Dunleavy of DC Metro Theatre Arts reviewed the play:
Angela Smith plays Josie Hogan, the hardest working woman to be found on any tenant farm in 1920s Connecticut. Anthony Lawton plays Jim Tyrone, a dissipated Broadway actor who owns the land Josie farms on. Josie sees Jim as her last chance for love; Jim sees Josie as his last chance for redemption. And Josie’s rascally father Phil (Michael P. Toner) sees a marriage between them as his own way out of poverty. So on one long, momentous night in the Hogans’ yard, Josie and Jim, aided by a quart of whiskey and a surfeit of moonlight, open up to each other, tear apart old illusions, relive the pain in Jim’s past and look for a way to put all their agony behind them.
A Moon for the Misbegotten is two and a half hours long, but Director Kate Galvin’s production never drags. Galvin creates a satisfying sense of intimacy by having the actors move to the edge of the tiny acting space, delivering speeches just inches from the audience. Even during Jim’s confessional monologue, when his head is buried in Josie’s bosom, he pulls himself out of her embrace and inches toward the audience at crucial moments, confiding his innermost thoughts to the audience.
Read the full DC Metro Theatre Arts review of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten