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Set on a warm, early spring day in 1923, Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten takes place approximately eleven years after its germinal forebear, Long Day's Journey into Night, which depicted the tragic, drug- and disease-ridden lives of the Tyrone family.

A Moon for the Misbegotten reintroduces us to the alcoholic, tortured James ("Jim") Tyrone, Jr. (Forrest Attaway) and his repressed romantic feelings for Josie Hogan (Tanya Barber), a local Connecticut farm girl with an ambiguous past (is she the town whore or a virgin?).  And, in turn, we experience Josie's tenuous relationship with her loud, verbally abusive father, Phil (played by Ari Bavel) - and her equally repressed feelings for James.

The play is a deep, dark and intense study of family and interpersonal dynamics that challenges the viewer with the plots and counter-plots. Virtually parallel during the entire play are Phil's attempts to use Josie to swindle Jim out of his large, impending inheritance, Josie knowing that her father is prone to such double-crosses; and Jim's tendency (is it intentional or unintentional?) to drop tantalizing tidbits about the status of a pending "hostile takeover" of his farm by a rich and vindictive neighbor T. Stedman Harder, (played memorably, albeit briefly, by Kevin Albert).

At any given point, one of the characters - but more often Phil or Josie - is trying to detangle these clues (or mis-clues) to ascertain where the truth really lies. The audience as well, must try to keep track. Is Josie a fallen woman or an innocent? Is Phil using Josie to get the financial upper hand on Jim, or does he have other malevolent (or benevolent) intentions? Does Josie really love Jim or is that just part of her (or Phil's) plot? Does Jim really love Josie - or is that just part of his plot?

 
The result is a blue- vs. white-collar intellectual fencing match:  dodges, parries and thrusts from start to finish. Within all this intrigue, a dual meaning emerges from the title. On the surface, Josie and Jim can be seen as truly "misbegotten" characters - Josie daily made to feel (by Phil) like a nuisance and a burden; Jim constantly torturing himself for being such a disappointment to his mother. Near the end of the play, the plots and counter-plots start to bump into each other with unintended consequences - truly "misbegotten" (ill-conceived) conniving that ultimately benefits no one.

Husband and wife team Bob and Karen Paisley covered Direction, Set Design (Karen) and Lighting (Bob). I particularly liked the efficiency of the set depicting the Hogan's hard-scrabble farm complete with clothesline and working water pump. The actors were able to use the full space well and often, and this kept the "motion" going in a play that was primarily about plotting and wits rather than action.

Casting, especially with the characters of Jim and Josie, was excellent. Forrest Attaway's interpretation of Jim was skillfully nuanced and allowed the audience to experience the full range of torment that consumes him. Ari Bavel as Phil Hogan, delivered a commanding performance as the dumb-like-a-fox, manipulative, verbally abusive father. Underlying that gruff demeanor, though, Bavel managed to deftly interweave glimpses of the deep love he truly feels for his only daughter.

Pivotal to the on-stage dynamic is the role of Josie Hogan, played brilliantly by Tanya Barber. Hers is the focal character that interacts most directly with Phil and Jim, and with such vast differences in those characters - Phil a big bear of a man with a volatile and bombastic personality, and Jim an insecure, lovelorn shambles of a man - Barber had her hands full. As the play - quite long compared to recent MET productions - progressed, I found myself gravitating more and more towards Barber as the fulcrum that balanced the opposing personalities of her male counterparts.

REVIEW:
Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre
A Moon for the Misbegotten
by Eugene O'Neill
Directed by Karey Paisley
Runs March 2 - March 14 (Reviewed Saturday, March 6)
MetSpace
3614 Main Street
Kansas City, MO  64111
For tickets call 816-569-3226 or online at www.metkc.org

Top photo: Cast member Forrest Attaway as James ("Jim") Tyrone, Jr.

By Christopher Guerin

Traditional and New Classical music, and Theatre Contributor (Past writer)
Christopher Guerin holds degrees in Music Education, Music Business, and Music Theory & Composition, the latter from the University of Massachusetts (Lowell) College of Music where he co-founded the college's Composers' Guild, and, in 1985, won the Artin Arslanian Composition Award. During college, he also obtained some musical theatre experience as a member of pit orchestras for Threepenny Opera and My Fair Lady. Since 1989, Christopher has been in the very non-artistic corporate sector, where his creative energies have been put to more mundane endeavors 

Christopher credits his musical motivations to his late father, who was concertmaster of the Springfield (MA) Community (pre-cursor to the city's current Symphony) Orchestra and performed popular music on radio in the 1930s. Christopher began his classical training in 1972 at age 10, began teaching at 16 (continuing to take private students throughout college), and traveled extensively with a youth orchestra - including to New Zealand in 1980. After college, and until 1989, Christopher focused on the business end of music as a successful sales manager for one of New England's largest music chains.

Over the past 20 years, Christopher's expertise has focused on medicine as a life risk underwriting officer for a large Midwest insurance group. His past duties included responsibility for risk underwriting in Pacific Rim markets where he traveled extensively to Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Thailand and Burma. Time permitting, he has continued to compose intermittently throughout this period. Christopher is married to Paula, a fellow musician he met during college, and together they have "composed" their magnum opera in three very creative children - an architecture student (go K-State!), an aspiring classical pianist, and a budding writer/journalist. He and his wife relocated from Massachusetts to the Kansas City area in 1997. 

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