This review is only partly for Marin Onstage’s just ended production of Moon For the Misbegotten. Eugene O’Neill’s play may seem in a way dated in its treatment of alcoholism (it was first produced in 1947) but the problems addressed are universal and timeless. We see greed raising its ugly head on a number of fronts, a father and his grown daughter who know each other too well constantly sparring, the tension between two would-be but never-quite-become lovers. There is conniving and scheming, bickering and just-missed assault, all of it fueled by a constant flow of liquor. And just as in real life, these quandaries are addressed and never quite resolved.
That is the essence of this play, made whole in this theater-in-the-round production. St. Vincent’s is a folding-chair sort of a theatrical space with a cabaret touch, with enough room for a half-dozen round tables for the audience to sit at. For this Moon the raised stage was used only as a backdrop, with the skeleton of a dirt-poor farmer’s shanty backed by blackness. The action takes place on the floor, a spare set with the suggestion of bare dirt, a few tree-stumps and a hand-pump well. Every seat is front-row.
The first act introduces the characters and the tensions that bind them to and repel them from each other. Father and daughter Michael and Caitlin Walraven play the farmer Phil Hogan and his daughter Josie. Their real-life relationship informs their portrayals of these characters eking out a living on a patch of rocks owned by landlord James Tyrone. The second act establishes the brewing crisis: the farm is about to be taken over by a greedy neighbor (Will Lamers). But it the third act, where that the play really catches fire, that the power and drama of O’Neill’s script takes flight. Here the long-simmering push-pull tension of disdain and longing between James and Josie ignites and cools again and again, giving them and the audience a sometimes painful at the conflict between what we desire and what we know we will never attain. Stellar performances by Caitlin Walraven and John Nahigian in this highly charged conclusion brought more than a mist of a tear to the eyes of some of us.
Splendidly directed by Ron Nash, who also directed the other two plays in Marin Onstage’s Spring 2014 season at St. Vincent’s. It was an ambitious series with a focus on the power of women in the life of the early years of the last century, a glimpse of how far we have come, a view of the path that brought us to where we are today. Special thanks also to Jeanine Gray and Lisa Immel for such well-tuned costumes.
The season ends today, but you can expect nothing but the best from Marin Onstage in the fall of 2014, at the Little Theater at St. Vincent’s (1 St. Vincent’s Drive, San Rafael CA)
Theater Marin website: www.marintheatre.org
David Hirzel website: www.davidhirzel.net