David Threlfall and Ruth Wilson in A Moon for the Misbegotten at the Almeida Theatre. Credit Marc Brenner.Considered by many to be a follow-up to Long Day’s Journey into Night, A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN tackles the tricky issues of grief, alcoholism and the perpetual contradiction of wealth disparity in the land of the American dream where money is king but where in reality, few manage to do little more than scrape by.
Phil Hogan (David Threlfall) ekes out an existence working his farm on rented land. The third of his three sons Mike (Peter Corboy) worn down by his father’s constant bullying and demands, is about to run off as we join the play. He is encouraged in this endeavour by Josie (Ruth Wilson) his straight-talking sister who is made of sterner stuff and has developed a reputation for getting what she wants, which we’re led to believe, is sleeping with various men in the locality. The landowner of an adjoining property T Stedman Harder (Akie Kotabe) pays a visit and is treated abysmally, part of a wider ruse involving the possible sale of the farm. The land’s owner, James Tyrone (Michael Shannon) arrives some time later, having recently inherited the property after burying his mother. Ordinarily he is an actor on Broadway, where he deploys his celebrity status to bed women of easy virtue. His brief return to the area reignites long-held feelings for Josie, which he is eager to express, believing perhaps that the combination of grief, guilt and chronic alcoholism which fuel his life, will shortly bring about his own death.
The anguish of Josie’s all-consuming love, held for so long close to her heart that it has become more convenient to pretend to be a loose woman than a virgin, is central to the play’s moralising about sobriety, integrity and virtue. Each character is in some way complicit in maintaining smokescreens and deceptions which disguise feelings and intentions.
In directing the cast, Rebecca Frecknall has deployed her signature hyper-realism with each actor conveying emotions which run the gamut. There’s a compulsion here, to extract scrupulous truth and honesty from her players, albeit that their depictions are often clouded by whiskey — though never to the point of pastiche. The result, is a production which on occasion, is brutally funny, but by the end delivers a searing and tragic indictment of human frailty.
Running time: 3 hours with interval.
A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN runs at Almeida until 16 August.
