dancing with a dead man
by
Douglas Messerli
Eugene
O’Neill A Moon for the Misbegotten 1947 / the production I saw was of
the 1973 revival filmed for ABC television
As
some critics, over the years, have commented, Eugene O’Neill’s last play, a
kind of sequel to the then (A Moon for the Misbegotten premiered in
1947) unproduced Long Day’s Journey into Night, is a fragile work that
needs a near-perfect cast to bring it to life, reiterated, almost, by the
various lengths of the play’s runs.
The original Broadway production, directed
by Carmen Capalbo, despite some first-rate actors in Franchot Tone and Wendy
Hiller, lasted only 68 performances, a flop by any definition. Its failure also
meant the playwright’s break with the Theatre Guild, who had previously
produced a great many of his works.
The Off-Broadway revival of 1968 by the Circle
in the Square Theatre, directed by Theodore Mann and starring Salome Jens as
Josie, ran for less than a week.
The second Broadway revival of this play
at the Cort Theatre, directed by David Leveaux, in 1984. Kate Nelligan, as
Jocie, was nominated for a Tony, but it ran only for 40 performances, even less
that the original production.
The third revival, directed by Daniel
Sullivan in 2000 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, with Cherry Jones as Jocie, lasted
a bit longer at 120 performances. Perhaps by that time audiences had grown
somewhat more accustomed to O’Neill’s longish monologues, the tough-and-rough
language of Jocie and her father, and the long pauses in the rhythm of the
play.
In 2007 there was yet a 4th
revival at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre—starring the wonderful Eve Best as
Jocie—which lasted for 2 ½ months, after a 112-performance run at London’s Old
Vic.
As dreary as these figures are, however,
there was one extremely important exception, revealing the effectiveness of
this play.
In 1973, José Quintero directed three
actors with long careers and life-long devotion to O’Neill works: Colleen
Dewhust, Jason Robards, Jr.,—who later performed the same character, at a
younger age, in the 1962 film version directed by Sidney Lumet.
For the acting in this production both
Dewhurst and Ed Flanders as her father, won Tony awards, as the play when on to
run for 314 performances (a solid run for a serious Broadway drama), and is
pretty much recognized now by most critics as the definitive production.
That version, after its Broadway run, went
on to be performed at Washington D.C.’s The Kennedy Center, where, amazingly,
Howard and I saw it also in 1973.
Yet, I remember little of it, only
perceiving it fully in the ABC taping of the same production, which I saw
yesterday. The film received 5 Emmy nominations, with Ed Sanders winning the
award for Supporting Actor.
O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten in
terms of plot, is hardly complex. The work begins with with the farmer Hogan’s
(Flanders) third son, Mike, escaping the hard work and abuse from his father he
has had to endure for most of his life to live with his two other brothers. His
sister Jocie, abets that escape, even producing the boy with a few dollars she
has stolen from her father’s money box.
She remains in good stead with the now
furious father through her bluster, her quick-witted tongue, and a large stick
she holds onto so that her father can feel justified for his inability to beat
her for her participation in the betrayal.
Their hardscrabble farm is owned by Jamie,
now spoken of as Jim and Jimmy, whose father, the noted actor James Tyrone, Sr.
one day inexplicably purchased it. The younger James is a regular visitor to
the farm, loving to chat with her father, and secretly in love with Jocie, who
also has the reputation of being the nearby town’s whore, a moniker she seems herself
to encourage.
Yet James realizes the lie of that boast,
perceiving her (correctly) still as a virgin, and finding her tall, somewhat
imposing stature (She describes herself “a cow of a woman”) as a thing of
beauty.
If in the early scenes there is a great
deal of coming and going, James paying them a visit to announce that their
wealthy, pompous neighbor Steadman Harder will soon be paying them a visit to
protest the fact that Hogan’s pigs occasionally escape their pen and slip into
Harder’s pristine pond.
But the major events occur in the second
act in a series of non-events surrounding the central two figures. We first
glimpse Jocie, attired in her best dress, including socks and shoes—throughout
most of the play this Amazon is barefooted—awaiting the would-be lover who is
now several hours late.
Furious, she pulls off her stockings and
shoes, as her father finally returns from the same nearby bar where he has gone
with James.
Under the cover of drunkenness, he angrily
complains to his daughter that they can no longer trust James, since at the bar
their landlord has agreed to the now outrageous price for their worthless farm
for $10,000, enough surely that Jim might return to New York and his “Broadway
tarts.”
Still furious for being stood up, and now
hearing what she believes as the truth, Jocie plots revenge. If her father will
bring James to her, she will drink with him (she is a near teetotaler), getting
him drunk before carrying him in her bed, while her father and others he brings
with him at daybreak will attest to sexual misconduct, allowing the Hogans to get
back the $10,000 which they know he will pay out of guilt.
Hogan goes off, but James, hours late,
finally does finally show up, while Jocie attempts to get him soused. Knowing
her as well as he does (he has long perceived the lie of her sexual
indiscretions), he refuses to allow her to drink.
And as they two talk in the moonlight, she
gradually uncovers the truth, that the offer from Harder was verbally accepted
only so that the next day he can again refuse him, bedeviling the vile, rich
neighbor.
Recognizing his honesty, Jocie nearly
swoons over a couple of kisses between the two of them and his frenzied head
buried on her lap, as he alternates between coherent banter and almost shrill drunken
memories that continue to haunt him.
Allowing herself to be taken in love, she
brings him into her bed, where he quickly, again in his drunken state of mind,
attempts to rape her, she running from the room declaring that she is not a “whore.”
He apologizes but also suggests it may be
good that she has seen him like that, his real self who would totally destroy
her if they become more romantically entwined.
Finally, he drunkenly mumbles out the terrible
story of how, upon his mother’s death and, with her coffin in baggage, during
his voyage to her final burial he called each night for a $56 dollar whore with
whom he had sex. He was so drunk by the time they reached their destination
that he missed his mother’s final funeral.
Jocie is shocked, but ultimately forgives
him, and realizes that he has told her something he had told no other. She
allows him to rest on her lap for the rest of night, only awakening him with
the sunrise.
The result is obvious since James is off
to New York by the end of the week, probate on the family home finally coming
to an end.
Not only has Jocie realized the truths of
his private confession, but accepts it as an unconditional offering of love,
while still perceiving that the man whom she loves is actually, like his entire
family except Edmond (O’Neill) who is extremely ill ghosts.
What most fascinates me about this dance
with a dead man is Jocie’s—and to a certain extent James’— constant effort to
pull and push away from one another while at the very same moment they entice
each other back into embrace. It is truly a kind of dance with death punctuated
with fearful hope and utter disgust. By the exhausting end of this “dance,”
Jocie can hardly walk, so tied up in knots are her legs for holding and
protecting him all night.
But by the daylight, when her father
returns, claiming it was all scheme, not for the money, but to bring the two of
them together, his daughter has grown strong knowing that once in her life she
did possess love, even if it was delivered from the dead of the Tyrone family.
She threatens to finally leave her father, but by the end of the play remains
with him.
And it is, ultimately, this alternating
sense of love and rejection which makes O’Neill’s work so very brilliant—even if
it takes only great actors to achieve it on stage.
Los
Angeles, June 18, 2020
Reprinted
from USTheater, Opera, and Performance
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