A Moon for the Misbegotten
Almeida
★★★★

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN currently playing at the Almeida is a class work by any standards and another feather in the cap for a theatre with high aspirations.

The play — completed by Eugene O’Neill in 1943 as a sequel to his masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night — takes the breath away for its originality, realism and sheer emotional power. The production builds on director Rebecca Frecknall’s now unassailable reputation as a leader in the field, and, with Ruth Wilson, Michael Shannon and David Threlfall in the leads, it’s a beacon on the London theatrical landscape.

The play in its time was celebrated as a late great from the author. Its immersion in the specific, authentic setting of a dilapidated Connecticut farmhouse, coupled with its glorious revelling in the language of Americans with Irish heritage was ground-breaking then and still mesmerises now.

The character of Josie (Wilson) runs on to the stage to start the play. And there she is from kick-off to the end — one of those defining creations of modern theatre — a fearsome woman with the strength and will to combat any man: a woman shaped by hardship and toil, whose character reflects that of her father but whose inner workings are complex and profound. This is Josie’s story more than it is her father’s, and even more than it is the sorry tale of the man she loves and longs for: James Tyrone, called Jim.

Jim Tyrone is the older version of one of the sons portrayed in Long Day’s Journey into Night. He is based on O’Neill’s own older brother, a desolate alcoholic and broken man who describes himself in the play as exhibiting “the melancholy of 10 Hamlets.”

The play is performed in two halves over three hours. Before the interval, the characters and situation are established through powerfully rich language and wild, idiosyncratic interaction. But it is in the second half that the real greatness of the drama emerges. Here, under a magical full moon, the sadly “misbegotten” Josie and Jim strip down the layers and coatings — the tricks, pretences and disguises — that hide them from the world and find a spiritual union of love at its deepest and finest, if only temporarily.

It is in this scene, where Josie longs sexually for Jim as he longs to love her, that O’Neill finds true genius. Deeply moving and engrossing, this is the heart of the play — the first half and the ending seeming more like a mode of transport to and from the real, original core of the drama. Indeed, the lengthy and circular scene setting of Act 1 hints at self-indulgence in a work of otherwise transcendent power. 

Wilson inhabits Josie as if born to play her. Shannon’s dead-eyed despair radiates misery. And Threlfall adds charm to a devious, dark-spirited rogue.

Frecknall, meanwhile, captures the play’s brilliance, though without the accustomed inventiveness she normally brings to a modern audience. Instead, she presents the play as O’Neill wrote it, performed with fitting reverence.

Runs until August 16. Box Office: 020 7359 4404, almeida.co.uk