A Moon for the Misbegotten

Theatergoers in Denton, Texas have come to expect high-quality productions from Denton Community Theatre. Those couple of hundred spectators in the three-hundred-seat capacity space of the Campus Theatre were not disappointed on February 18 with this matinee production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, one of Eugene O’Neill’s late masterpieces and a quasi-sequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night. This nonprofit organization, now under the umbrella name Theatre Denton, which also comprises Music Theatre of Denton and other local performing arts groups, has as its main venue the Campus Theatre, a former movie house built in 1949 and used to screen movies until 1985. Renovated in 1995, this handsome space one block west off the downtown Denton Square has a proscenium, semithrust stage that worked well for this play of realistic style. No curtain was used. The stage went dark momentarily to signal the end of each act. Illumination of the house lights signaled the intermission between the two parts into which this production was divided. This long play was cut considerably to two and a half hours, including the twenty-minute intermission; however, every twist in the constant scheming of the characters was included. The production pleased in its set and costume design, sound and lighting, and overall direction and excelled in its acting.The set, designed by Philip Lamb, did not exactly follow O’Neill’s detailed description. The attractive house, not as dilapidated as O’Neill envisioned, almost filled the stage with its size and consisted of both realistic and expressionistic elements. Constructed of planks that outlined its square shape and the door and windows, there were no solid walls; however, those who entered the house could not be seen by the audience. A layered entrance consisting of a storm door over an inside door was the most realistic detail of the structure, making entry and exit from it a double task. Inside the windows were makeshift curtains of yellow cloth, pulled aside to allow in light. Although the stairs indicated the entrance to Josie’s room, the second-story window in O’Neill’s description is supposed to be part of the main house, not an add-on as it was in this production. The famous stairs on which Josie and Jim Tyrone sit had treads and open risers. The large size of the house for this stage space also did not allow two modes of entry and exit, one at stage left to the road and one at stage right to the rest of the farm as prescribed in the text. Those entering or leaving could do so only from stage right. In the stage left background was a one-dimensional, expressionistic tree consisting of black, flat branches of equal width going in haphazard angles behind a realistic clothesline with items hanging from it. At stage right was part of a fence in collapsing condition, perhaps a visual allusion to the pigs-in-the-ice-pond story. The cyclorama behind the house darkened and lightened appropriately to indicate the shifts in time from day to night and back to morning. Light designer Les Deal and his assistant, Kristen Ray Deal, made stars twinkle in the night sky; but for some reason, unknown to me, the expected moon did not appear.Costume designer Erin Gern, sound operators/technicians Carrissa Davis with crew Patrick Schaider and Bethany Lopez, and props/set dressing designer Sharon Barnhill provided appropriate contextual details for the characters and action. Josie, portrayed by Elizabeth King, had two outfits. At first, she wore a gray-and-white checkered half-apron over a pale yellow, short-sleeved, collarless dress printed with small light-blue objects, perhaps flowers, and short boots. For her planned night under the moon with Jim, played by Jason Lee, she changed to a gray, white, and black plaid, scoop-neck, sleeveless dress and brown, Oxford-type, flat-heeled shoes. With her hair pulled back, we could concentrate on her facial expressions. Instead of a brown suit, specified by O’Neill’s text, Jim wore a black three-piece suit, better to symbolize his overwhelming mourning for his dead mother, his only true love, and his self-recrimination for his behavior during the transportation of her remains from California and his absence from her subsequent burial. He also wore a red boutonniere, tie, and pocket handkerchief, accent colors also departing from O’Neill’s description but perhaps suggesting his regretted escapes into lust. Phil Hogan, played by Caleb Norris, wore a clean, white untucked shirt over black pants while Harder, acted by Joshua Fargason, sported an expensive-looking riding outfit: dark-brown short coat, colorful tie, tan jodhpurs, light-brown, tall leather riding boots, and black cap while holding a nonthreatening riding crop, pointed down while Hogan was literally in his face. In stature Harder was appropriately the shortest character, dominated by Hogan and his Irish wit; Josie was the tallest, the leader in argumentative domination.The sound effects included music played before act 1, during the intermission, and following the production. The actors wore microphones, visible in the still photographs. Josie’s voice was amplified too greatly until her private scenes with Jim, but her speech was always understandable. The men’s amplified voices sounded more natural and comfortable to the ears of the audience. Faint music played before the production began, then got sweeter and louder right before the opening scene as the sounds of “When the Day Is Through” could be discerned. During the intermission snippets of lyrics “Again and Again,” “Unforgettable,” and one other that I could not recognize filled the auditorium. After the production ended, “Someone to Watch over Me” played as the audience was leaving.Director Julia Bodiford skillfully guided the use of props necessary to the action and the movement of characters. The props were used with natural gestures: the suitcase grabbed by Mike, played by Rivets Davis-Ward, as Josie hurried him off to catch the next trolley and join his brothers, who have left their father’s domination and the farm’s hard work; glasses, bottles, and a pitcher for all the drinking onstage, mainly by Josie and Jim around the boulder at stage left of the house; and the anachronistic smokeless cigarette lit by Jim. Although the play’s action consists mainly of verbal contests, who can put over the better scheme on whom while secretly looking out for each other, the characters kept moving physically. Jim and Josie’s long scene in the play’s act 3 had the two sitting, standing, moving back and forth between the boulder and the house steps, movements that paralleled their back-and-forth banter about Josie’s sexual status, their feelings for and intentions toward each other, Jim’s plans for selling the farm to Hogan, and the latter’s interactions with Jim. There was never a time when the audience’s attention drifted from the schemes, retorts, or recital of past behaviors and motivations; the audience, which consisted of both young and older persons, seemed steadily attentive. Whenever Josie sat down, she spread her legs and used her hand to dip her dress between them. Coached by Intimacy Director Claire Fountain, she held Jim in this way when he fell asleep on her breast after his confession. The intentionally somewhat-awkward kissing scenes between Josie and Jim effectively conveyed the sincere but hopelessly incompatible feelings between them.Of all aspects of this production that made it successful, the most important was the acting. All the characters of the small cast played their parts exceptionally well under Bodiford’s keen understanding of O’Neill’s intentions. Although no more than a walk-on part in this actor’s first post-college role, Davis-Ward’s Mike effectively set the action in motion as the first character to be successfully managed by Josie, the de facto matriarch of the Hogans. Burly in appearance and aggressive in demeanor, Norris’s Hogan easily overpowered the genteel speech and mannerisms of Fargason’s Harder. The audience responded loudly to the jokes and Jim’s hearty guffaws while hiding inside the house to avoid being visible to Harder without missing Hogan’s berating of his rich neighbor—O’Neill’s satire of the upper class even as he wrote the play from his hilltop California estate. Good-looking and clean-cut, Lee as Jim seemed a bit young for the part and not at all dissipated looking or drop-asleep drunk. His shaking hands did have difficulty lighting his cigarette, but I lack knowledge concerning the appearance of fortyish chronic boozers. Lee was always convincing in his standoffs with King’s Josie and appropriately elicited the audience’s sympathy for his regrets and their admiration for his not taking advantage of Josie’s unsubtle propositions.The outstanding actor in casting, appearance, and performance was King with her domination of the stage in the formidable role as the sole female character at a time when women were not expected to be strong willed. On stage for the entire wordy play as others came and went, she never faltered in her memory and delivery of the staggering amount of dialogue demanded of her. A tall, well-shaped, handsome woman, despite her unflattering dresses and with no visible facial makeup, she must have been an easy casting choice to play the part of Josie, who consistently stood her ground yet empathized with her antagonists even as she experienced heartbreak. She exhibited the physical endurance, sensitive compassion, and reluctant but inevitable acceptance of Jim’s inability to return her love and devotion; easily managed her brother, her father, and Jim; and was a verbal schemer equal to anyone she encountered as well as a physical presence of which to be wary. She perfectly brought O’Neill’s creation of Josie to life. This production was an excellent rendering of O’Neill’s sensitive homage to his older brother, who ironically feels abandoned in the play’s text, both for those who had not read or seen the play previously and for those who know it a little or well.