A Moon for the Misbegotten is a play by Eugene O’Neill
Melbourne Theatre Company Production 1990

The play can be thought of as a sequel to the autobiographical Long Day’s Journey into Night. Jim Tyrone is an older version of Jamie Tyrone from the first play, and they are both based on Eugene O’Neill’s older brother, Jamie O’Neill. Set in a dilapidated Connecticut house in early September 1923, the play focuses on three characters: Josie, a domineering Irish woman with a quick tongue and a ruined reputation, her conniving father, tenant farmer Phil Hogan, and James Tyrone, Jr., Hogan’s landlord and drinking companion, a cynical alcoholic haunted by the death of his mother.

The play begins with Mike, the last of Hogan’s three sons, leaving the farm. As a joke during one of their drunken bouts, Tyrone threatens to sell his land to his hated neighbor, T. Steadman Harder, and evict Hogan. Hogan creates a scheme in which Josie will get Tyrone drunk, seduce him, and blackmail him. Josie and Tyrone court in the moonlight.
The scheme falls through when Josie finds out that Tyrone isn’t going to sell the land to Harder after all. Tyrone tells Josie the story of how, after his mother died, he traveled back East on the train, and hired a blonde prostitute for $50 a night to overcome his grief. Tyrone leaves for New York to handle his mother’s estate, apparently to die soon of complications from alcoholism.

Cast: Pamela Rabe, George Whaley, Philip Holder, Rhys Muldoon

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