The Stage

A Moon for the Misbegotten

Published Wednesday 27 September 2006 at 16:20 by Aleks Sierz

They say that work is the curse of the drinking classes but they are wrong, drink is the curse of the drinking classes. And no one writes about the splendours and miseries of drunkeness as well as Eugene O’Neill.

In his last play, first staged in 1947, he paints a vivid portrait of Jim Tyrone, a city lush who finally confronts the truth of his life one moonlit night in twenties rural America.

Set on the dusty farm of Phil Hogan, a poor Irish farmer who’s partial to a tipple himself, the plot begins with his plan to marry his daughter Josie to Tyrone. But when Tyrone finally has a heart to heart with Josie, it’s a meeting of two hopelessly lost souls brilliantly acted by Kevin Spacey and Eve Best.

As Tyrone, Spacey slowly uncoils over the middle two hours of O’Neill’s rambling play and then comes storming home in the final half hour when he delivers a stupendous blowout of guilty fury and high passion. Clutching his glass like a crucifix, he persuades you that all drunks are actors until they are finally stripped bare.

Best’s Josie struggles to get over the fact that O’Neill’s text demands a huge and ugly countrywoman rather than a shapely beauty but her performance is perfectly judged in its mix of brazen front and coy shyness.

Superbly directed by Howard Davies, beautifully designed by Bob Crowley, and with Colm Meaney excellent as the crafty Phil, this is a long evening but one full of heartfelt compassion, ragged humanity and the unbearable sadness of being.