Far From Misbegotten Review from the Hardwick Gazette, August 18, 2004

Far From Misbegotten, O'Neill Play Bold And Experimental

REVIEW
by June Pichel Cook, Hardwick Gazette, August 18, 2004

CALAIS - When leaving the QuarryWorks production of Eugene O'Neill's play, "A Moon for the Misbegotten," one wonders why the most devious character in the play is so likable - the aging Irish curmudgeon Phil Hogan.

Russ Longtin, who heads the theater department at Johnson State College, plays a full range of emotions with his expressive face and eyes, his wonderful body stances, and hand gestures. He captures nuances in Hogan's character that leave the audience wondering which story to believe or when Hogan is on the level with daughter Josie or Jim Tyrone, the drunken landlord. Carol Dawes, director of the Barre Opera House, plays the role of Josie; and William Pelton of Montpelier is Tyrone.

The height of hilarity and Hogan's Irish guile comes in a scene between the Hogans and T. Stedman Harder (played by Eric Smith), a millionaire, Standard Oil abutter who wants to be rid of his ne'er-do-well neighbors cluttering up the place with their poverty, drunkenness, unsightliness, and pigs wallowing in his ice pond. Taking the offensive, the Hogans accuse Harder of deliberately breaking the fence down, enticing their pigs over, and generally causing problems. Harder, completely befuddled, leaves in a rage, and we know he will prevail sooner or later. Although Phil dances in glee for the oppressed and impoverished winning this skirmish, the war is yet to be won. Harder can simply raise the ante to buy the "rock pile of a farm" from the young landlord, who is almost always drunk and never quite sure of what he has promised or not promised. By buying the farm, Harder could be rid of the nuisance tenants.

A Moon for the Misbegotten is a serious play and rides a thin line between comedy and tragedy. It's both sad and humorous. O'Neill's understanding of human loneliness and longing, unrequited desires and frailties, conflicts and failures flow through the play's poignant soliloquies and witty lines. O'Neill, one of America's greatest dramatists won three Pulitzer prizes in his lifetime. He was born in 1888 and died in 1953. A Moon for the Misbegotten, written in 1952, was his last play. He was a bold, experimental playwright who moved drama from the melodramatic into psychological probings and subtle unravelings of the human psyche. Production coordinator Tom Stevens, in choosing this three-hour saga; which has little action but relies on the text and actor's ability to move actions forward, has also been bold and experimental.

The intimate stage in the small theater on the grounds of the Adamant Music School lends itself to the play's setting, which takes place on the Hogan's front porch, weathered and unpainted, cluttered with all the trappings of a rural Connecticut farm in 1923. The scene could be anywhere in Vermont with its rural poor and underside not usually found in the typical Vermont Life photograph. Tools, old crocks, buckets, scythes, clothes drying on a rack, wheelbarrow, rocking chair, wood pile, and weeds sticking out from the porch floor are familiar sights.

The action throughout the play is quite static, beginning at noon when Josie helps her youngest brother, Mike, to escape their domineering father, Phil. It moves into midnight of the same day followed by dawn of the next day. Josie's temperament is equal to her father's, and she has no fear of him. She can out club him, out maneuver him, and out tongue-lash him. But although she too may long to escape and can almost find love in the young landlord, Jim, her roots are too deeply embedded in self-doubts, loyalty perhaps to her father, or maybe, unconsciously in her Catholic upbringing. Her haunting soliloquy in the last act when drunken Jim lies asleep on her bosom reveals a tenderness she hides behind a facade of brash toughness.

When her father tells her Jim has sold the farm to Harder, she conspires to get Jim drunk and seduce him into bed so her father will find them in the morning and demand that Jim marry her. She learns, however, nothing is quite like her father has told her. Her love and pathos for Jim conflict with what may be the most pragmatic thing to do.

The play covers a full gamut of human emotions. Production coordinator Stevens says his actors had to decode O'Neill's script "to see how much O'Neill meant." He said it is a well-written play that raises questions, tries to answer them by the end of the play and threads through the complexities of alcoholism and its role in stereotypical Irishness. It reveals the American-Irish sensibility of Catholicism sifted through sin, guilt, remorse, redemption. The haunting ghosts of oneself are present, but as ephemeral and shifting as Irish guile and gift for storytelling.

Original music b y Colin McCaffrey set the mood opening the play and after the intermission and provided a soulful background, particularly in Josie's soliloquy. The play will be performed Aug. 19-22. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings at 7:30 p.m,; Saturday matinee at l p.m.; and Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Admission is free, however, seating is limited.