O'Neill Agonistes

By T. E. Kalem

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN by EUGENE O'NEILL

Broadway is a noble word again. Power, beauty, passion and truth command the stage of the Morosco Theater where A Moon for the Misbegotten has been revived in unmitigated triumph. We owe it all to the sensitive direction of Jose Quintero, the matchless performances of Jason Robards, Colleen Dewhurst and Ed Flanders and the piercing vision of Eugene O'Neill, who could laugh over humanity's impish follies and grieve over the sad agony of man's fate.

Josie Hogan (Dewhurst) calls herself "a great cow" and keeps house for her widowed father. She passes herself off as a slut, fearing that no man could desire her. She is actually the shyest of virgins. James Tyrone Jr. (Robards), modeled on O'Neill's elder brother, sees through her sham and is strangely drawn to her inner sweetness and innocence. He is a part-time actor corroded by drink, whoring and self-loathing.

Josie's father Phil' (Handel's) is a bantam rooster of a Connecticut pig farmer with a tongue that spits black Irish bile at his Yankee neighbors. Phil is Tyrone's tenant, and he mistakenly fears that the scapegrace James intends to sell the farm. He baits a sex trap. Josie and James will be found in bed together. James will do the right thing and marry her. She will inherit the farm.

What actually occurs is a confessional by moonlight. Each is lulled to a deep tenderness. She confesses her secret, her virginity; he reveals that he had no intention of selling the land. Then, in a great, stormy, self-lacerating monologue, James explains why he is so hateful to himself. He had accompanied his mother's coffin on a tram from the West Coast to the East. Even drink could not blot out the pain of her death.

In a desperate degrading of her memory, James had made love to a fat tart "with the face of a baby doll" night after night in the private compartment next to his dead mother. At the end of the journey, he was too drunk even to attend her funeral. As Josie realizes, the only thing James wants from her is the temporary peace of absolution. She cradles him like a lost child, knowing that death alone can absolve him.

O'Neill wrote this play as a form of absolution for his brother. As with Long Day's Journey into Night, it was another attempt "to make peace with my dead," to lift the curse of the O'Neill family through the transfiguring insight and purgation of drama. Quintero has beautifully orchestrated the themes of sin, remorse, guilt, self-damnation and death that haunted the profoundly per/ turbed spirit of O'Neill.

Over the years, Jason Robards' psychic affinity for O'Neill has marked the peaks of his acting career. His Hickey in The Iceman Cometh, Jamie in Long Day's Journey, and title role in Hughie will probably never be surpassed. Increasingly, Robards even looks like O'Neill. He has the brooding, deep-set eyes that look out from O'Neill's photographs with searing gravity. His performance in Misbegotten will remain a touchstone for all actors to measure themselves by.

Similarly, Colleen Dewhurst is ideally cast. No woman has been big enough for the part before, not only physically but in that generosity of heart, mind and spirit which Josie must convey. Playing her father, Ed Flanders is the perfect physical foil, as diminutive as she is formidable. While he is the master of a waspish comic line, there is al ways a chink in the armor of his wit and anger through which his love shows.

When this trio appeared for the opening-night curtain call, the entire audience rose spontaneously to its feet. It knew that it was in the presence of theatrical royalty.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.