Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten concerns the metaphoric unmasking of its three main characters. This is O'Neill's sequel to his monumental Long Day's Journey into Night, a largely autobiographical play with a last-act showdown between the playwright's alter ego and the character derived from O'Neill's alcoholic brother. Misbegotten retains the self-loathing brother, James "Jim" Tyrone Jr., in a fictional story set on the tenant farm he owns but is willing to sell. He's an erstwhile actor now, an alcoholic with a fondness for the "gold-digging tarts" of Broadway and whose blackouts seem to equal his periods of lucidity.
Here Tyrone's faceoff comes with Josie Hogan, the broad-shouldered, hardworking daughter of lay-about tenant farmer Phil. She sees herself as an "overgrown lump of a woman" and cultivates a reputation as town slut but carries a torch for Jim, who suspects she's a virgin. And Irish immigrant Phil, despite his apparent laziness, is as good a schemer as they come -- and come they do to this tiny, ramshackle farmhouse in 1923 Connecticut.
Length seems always to be an issue with O'Neill plays (this one written in the mid-1940s), and Palm Beach Dramaworks makes sure its audience is prepared -- not only with a pre-curtain warning but with a lobby notice giving the time of the first act as 41 minutes and of the second act as 1 hour and 37 minutes.
William Hayes' brisk direction keeps things moving and his cast doesn't miss a beat. As Josie, Kati Brazda is onstage almost every minute of the play, joshing, scheming, consoling and forgiving. Jim Tyrone is the character with the literary history and the real-life inspiration, but this is Josie's play; it's Josie who delivers both the first and last lines of the play, both times alone on stage. Fans of O'Neill or of Long Day's Journey into Night may want to catch up with Tyrone but probably will be rooting for Josie. Certainly that's true of the Josie delivered by Brazda, who understudied the role in the 2007 Broadway production starring Eve Best and Kevin Spacey but never got on.
Todd Allen Durkin, one of South Florida's busiest actor/directors, gets the call for Jim Tyrone, a big man turned soft from the empty calories of booze assisted in the look by a dress shirt and suit jacket that are just a bit too tight. Hair slicked back, Durkin's Jim makes his first entrance declaiming in Latin, then later slides though his lines as the alcohol takes hold. Durkin does well with such 85-year-old phrases as "heebie-jeebies" and "Nix on that."
Veteran area actor Peter Haig is a treat as wily Phil Hogan; actor/playwright Michael McKeever gets decked out in riding breeches as an oil man's spoiled son whose desire for land could make the Hogans homeless, and Darryl Willis starts the proceedings as young Mike Hogan, who flees the Hogan farmhouse as his two brothers did before him, aided and abetted by Josie.
And what a farmhouse: Michael Amico's set on the small stage of the 85-seat theater is a ramshackle clapboard affair that's set off by cut-away boards on the side walls, painted to approximate a pretty blue sky dotted with clouds.
