Great acting - yes - Great Play - well....
If you wanted to find the antithesis of a Whitehall Farce, Moon for the Misbegotten would be a good first port of call.
A ‘sort-of’ sequel to the miserabilist ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ in that one character, the drunken actor Jamie Tyrone (now Jim – a character possibly based on O’Neil’s own brother) appears here years older.
The action plays over just one day – starting with the ‘escape’ of Josie’s younger brother from the tyranny of their Irish father’s (Phil) brutal drunken rule in their (very) rural Connecticut farm and ending with their alcoholic landlord Jim exiting from their lives after a night of (non) passion with Josie, caught in a web of her father’s deceit.
Set in the height of 1923 Prohibition (to which the drunken antics of all sets a satirical note) and written in 1944 it is fair to say that the two principal characters, Josie and Jim, lose everything, including each other. Neither can offer the sort of love the other wants, though each loves the other to the best of their ability – Josie wants a ‘proper’ husband, and Jim wants to recapture the relationship he had with his deceased mother.
Both love the other (in different ways) and hate themselves.
Without superb acting (and strong direction) this would simply be grim, but Ruth Wilson (on stage throughout the action) and Michael Shannon, at times almost catatonic, achieve the impossible making their terribly flawed characters both believable and even sympathetic. And David Threlfall’s appalling Phil finds what comedy there is in the script in a considerably heightened performance.
There is a MacGuffin – the ownership of the farm – but that’s irrelevant to the underlying plot themes.
The production leans into Brechtian theatre (the set is somewhat brutal, and actors stay on it, backs turned, when not in the action and the stage lighting becomes almost a character) but the direction allows real interpretation by the actors, and particularly Wilson whose Josie is genuinely engaging and boisterous and not just annoying (as the script might allow her to be).
Overall a play you enjoy for the quality of the production and, especially, the performances – but not necessarily the, at times, glacial plot.