A Moon for the Misbegotten, Almeida Theatre, stage review: ‘Wild fury’
Michael Shannon and Ruth Wilson in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Photograph: Marc Brenner
Gathering dust, choking darkness and that eponymous moon – grandfather of American theatre Eugene O’Neill’s final written play howls at the sky relentlessly.
As someone who grew up around desiccated barns and insular communities, I am aware of the creeping misery certain places can cultivate.
My central Devon might not be closely comparable to the Connecticut setting of O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten, but still.
The staging at the Almeida hints at the tone of the play before it has even begun, with collapsed pianos and grimy mirrors in an abandoned farm.
Trapped here are Josie Hogan (played by Ruth Wilson), her father Phil (David Threlfall), and visiting drunken landlord James Tyrone (Michael Shannon).
The rough-and-ready Hogans exile Josie’s younger brother, with two older brothers having already fled.
Father and daughter scheme and cheat their way to some sort of survival, but their situation is not exactly what you would call ‘thriving’.
Wilson, and I say this without hyperbole, is one of the best actresses of our time.
I loved her in the the National’s Hedda Gabler, and she brings the same wild fury to this role, but with less of the Ibsen manners.
Josie is an unconstrained woman, deriving individuality from hard work and a pretend licentiousness and promiscuity.
She rails, keeping her drunken and erratic father away with a club, physically and emotionally swinging and slugging, dashing this way and that.
She is a true character, and when she collides with Shannon’s drunken, cracked, and deeply disturbed James, the tussle in the moonlight has as many peaks and troughs as the Rocky Mountains.
Threlfall is a helpful comic breather as the almost poetic, undeniably hard-hearted and hard-fisted father figure. But like everyone, he has softer depths concealed beneath.
Director Rebecca Frecknall has again worked her magic on an early 20th-century classic, and she brings out the best in the seasoned professionals involved.
Yet the lack of setting – the porch and a small glimpse into the Hogans’ shack – proves a little unvaried for an experience that is over three hours long.
The final scene between Josie and James under the much-referenced moon sees O’Neill let loose his most barbed tricks to keep the audience engaged. But even with all the drinking, dancing, arguing, flirting, lying, and threats of violence, the minutes do seem to stretch.
Shannon’s cresting drunkenness is impressive, but it lacks the pathos of Brick Pollitt in Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
Josie is certainly a unique heroine for the time, and Wilson reshapes her afresh with great energy and dexterity.
But the repetitive and attempted poetic language somehow slips its saddle.
Themes of regret, escape and self-protection feel too starkly outlined by the writing, and the ending is snapped away, the creeping shadows of the play failing to extend for long in our minds.
A Moon for the Misbegotten runs until 18 August at the Almeida Theatre.