Customer Reviews

A Moon for the Misbegotten

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Sometimes plays are rediscovered after what seems to be utter failure, a valuable insight for all, I think. O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten was rejected by pre-Broadway audiences in Michigan and Ohio in the 1940s, effectively preventing the play from having a New York premiere during the author's lifetime. In each of the following two decades, attempts at New York productions failed. It took Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst to ignite the play for New York in the 1970s, under the direction of the legendary Jose Quintero.

O'Neill's playwriting career is oddly similar to that of Sam Shepard: He had an early series of realistic short plays, followed by a period of experiment, when he explored a variety of artistic impulses and writing styles. Eventually, he wrote a handful of plays, rooted in realism, sometimes autobiographical, which revealed, nevertheless, what he'd learned through experiment. In the best of these, The Iceman Cometh, Long Day's Journey into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten, O'Neill built vehicles of immense emotional power with psychologically rich characters and fairly organic plots.

MOON revolves around the Irish-American earth mother, Josie Hogan, a tall, rough-hewn woman, who promotes a course image of herself to cover a fragile and vulnerable interior. The other two "imposters" of the play are her father, Phil Hogan, and the landlord of their tired Connecticut farm, James Tyrone (based on O'Neill's brother), a third-rate Broadway actor, who has drunk his life away, chasing loose women and acting a fool. Nevertheless, Josie secretly harbors feelings for him. The play hinges on what happens when her father, through a clever, inebriated deception, convinces her to blackmail Tyrone into selling them the farm rather than selling it to their rich, obnoxious neighbor (for a much higher price). The subterfuge leads to one of the most poignant love scenes in American dramatic literature, as Josie and Jim Tyrone discover that they know and understand the person beneath the mask better than they each thought, and it's still not enough to unite them.

O'Neill's original title for the play was The Moon Bore Twins. We can be grateful for the change, though the original title does carry a measure of insight with it, for Josie and Tyrone are, if not identical twins psychologically, at least inversions of the same chord-doomed to occupy separate, mutually exclusive worlds.

The play contains an amazing shift of tone from the first half to the last half. In act one and two we are treated to a rather comic display of Irish inflected patter between Josie, her father, and the rest of the five characters. In the last two acts, the tone becomes more serious and bittersweet, which may explain why it took so long for audiences to catch up with it. The play definitely catches the viewer or reader off guard ... wishing that these two ne'er-do-wells could save each other from the future they have each envisioned. O'Neill's revised title says a lot about the play, for Moon is not as dark as Long Day's Journey, nor as demanding as Iceman, but it is O'Neill deploying all his gifts as a dramatist, writing fully realized roles containing emotional power, wit, humor, and pathos. His language reflects people who are driven to speak to stay alive. No one is writing like this today, except perhaps August Wilson.

A few weeks ago I eagerly ordered this play for I had plans to see Gabriel Byrne's performance as James Tyrone, Jr. in the current Broadway run of "A Moon for the Misbegotten." I very much enjoyed reading the book. I saw the play this weekend and was incredibly moved with how the actors brought this tale to life. Gabriel Byrne's performance was particularly awesome.

For those who are familiar with "A Long Day's Journey Into Night," this play follows up on the life of the eldest son/actor. I read somewhere that this was O'Neill eulogy to his real-life brother, who was the model for James Tyrone, Jr.

The play is about relationships, redemption, unconditional love, regrets, and hope. In a nutshell, the story is ecumenical. Other elements of the story that contributes to its overall tapestry is the sexual current between James and Josie, the story's heroine, and O'Neill's ability to balance much needed humor with pathos.

And for those who are interested in an introduction to O'Neill but are short on time, this particular play is a fast read.

I loved this play the first second i saw it on broadway. it gave me vibrations all over my body every time Cherry Jones said a line. It was an amazing story of true love and to give yourself over to someyone. And talking to Hope Davis made me cry after, because she said to me "I've never seen love so strong." I do hope you give Eugene O'Neill a chance and buy this amazing play. And try to see any production of his work being broadway or smaller productions. Thank you!

The last reviewer couldn't have said it better; this is a must read and by far definitely a MUST SEE!

The current broadway production is incredible!

O'Neill's "last" play, written and revised several times concurrently with his other four late plays, never made it to Broadway during his lifetime. After a lukewarmly received tour through the Midwest, O'Neill became dissatisfied with the production, in part because he was increasingly in poor health and also because he was never happy with the play to begin with. He finally gave up on the work, and published it with a curt, apologetic prefatory note, saying "I cannot presently give it the attention required for appropriate presentation."

In spite of its inauspicious beginnings, many consider it his greatest work. I reserve that laurel for "Long Day's Journey," but of all O'Neill's works, this one reads as well on the page as it looks on the stage. Its lead character, James Tyrone, is a thinly disguised version of O'Neill's brother, who drank himself to death in a sanatorium the year after their mother died. O'Neill resurrects his brother for the theater and throws him drunkenly into the arms of an impossible match: Josie Hogan, the daughter of a tenant living on land he inherited. She is, perhaps, O'Neill's most fully fleshed female lead--literally and figuratively. Strong-willed and strong-armed, she simultaneously flaunts and scorns her reputation as a "terrible wanton woman" (an image that is more invented than real), but it is immediately obvious that her true love is Tyrone himself.

The plot of the play rests on a swindle planned by Josie and her father, who mistakenly believe that Tyrone plans to sell their land to an insufferably pampered blueblood from the neighborhood. Their attempt at conning Tyrone with alcohol and blackmail, which resembles a tawdry version of every outrageous scheme concocted by Lucy Ricardo, quickly misfires as a half-comic caper that brings to all concerned a melancholy (but not exactly tragic) sense of loss and wistfulness.

You can see O'Neill struggling to redeem the brother he loved but never quite understood or forgave. But it is Josie who ultimately wins the audience's affections and sympathy.

This e-book is so poorly formatted it is nearly unreadable on the Kindle. For example:

MIKE--That's nice talk for a woman. You've a
tongue as dirty as
the Old Man's.

JOSIE--(impatiently) Don't start preaching, like you
love to, or
you'll never go.

I'm sorry I bought this!

This play is a touching and unconventional love story. It is far too long - O'Neill could have condensed Act Two into two lines of dialogue ("I have discovered X at the bar, and we should respond by doing Y." "OK.") and merged it into Act Three. Instead, Act Two is an interminable dialogue in which one character repeatedly makes reference to something he doesn't want to say, then his daughter pries it out of him, when it was obvious to the reader all along. It showcases a little of the relationship between the two characters, and there's a bit of a payoff for it at the end, but overall it does more harm than good.

Ultimately, this is a surprisingly good play, with clever dialogue and some noir-style plot twists. Everyone has secrets and lies, everyone is playing a careful game, but each one is lovable in his/her own way. There are some bizarre Oedipal aspects of the main love story, but the love as a whole comes across as something true and beautiful and not often seen in U.S. fiction.

"A Moon for the Misbegotten" is an excellent drama written by a master playwright. However, it might be helpful to people reading a review to note that any play you read in book form is very different than the experience of seeing the play enacted.

Actors bring a tremendous energy to the roles they play, and this energy is a large part of what people experience when they go to a theater or see a movie. Reading the words that the actors use is a very different experience. This is not to say that the experience of reading a play is of low value; reading a screenplay or script can add tremendously to the enjoyment of a piece. But no one should expect a quiet read under your favorite lamp with a cup of tea by your elbow to be anything like watching a play performed by good actors.

That being said, I highly recommend this book as a companion to any filmed or live production of the play. While reading, someone might wonder, "Why does this sound so ... stilted (or weird, or unnatural)? Why does it seem so different from the production I saw (in high school, on TV, at the theater, etc.)?" The answer is important to understand: you're reading a kind of road map that leads to drama, emotion, and insight. The map is not the journey, but it certainly helps the journey.

My only "criticism" of the play is the title, which I find a little too vague for the flesh-and-blood setting of the drama. The thoughts, intentions, dialog, and actions one encounters in "Moon for the Misbegotten" are gritty, more of a roadhouse than a lecture hall or a poetry convention! Alliteration is nice, but if it obscures the story even one bit, it only serves itself and perhaps makes the writer seem clever, not brilliant.

I ordered three books for my son for school. All arrived promptly and in the condittion I had been told they were in. I'm very happy.

O'Neill takes the emotion of sadness and is able to examine its many shades very well. He does this brilliantly in 'Long day's journe...' and 'A Moon for...'. Its a view of how each strain manifests itself and what precedes and succeeds it for different individuals.

'A Moon for...' has this in many forms including the sexual banter between Josie and James, which shows social and human pathos and hypocrisy (or lack thereof) very well.

Its not a cheerful play but it is very good because each note of sadness is appropriately tinged with humor or pathos or a combination of both.