A Moon for the Misbegotten

Rebecca Frecknall presents a night of beautiful pain at the Almeida

TRAFALGAR Entertainment boss Rosemary Squire recently moaned that theatregoers do not want to see shows that are more than two and a half hours long.

She's in the Entertainment business. Not theatre.

Anyway, The Moon for the Misbegotten is a great, heavy, static, beautiful and necessary three hour play. Maybe Squire should go.

Indeed, Rebecca Frecknall’s typically bold directorial style is notably restrained (there is no rain, no drums and absolutely no random piano) in this revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten, starring Michael Shannon and David Threlfall.

The result is a production that allows Eugene O’Neill’s melancholic drama to breathe in quieter, more contemplative ways—anchored by Ruth Wilson’s luminous central performance.

Wilson is of course a magnet: she deftly inhabits Josie Hogan, capturing the character’s layered contradictions: her blustery bravado and fierce wit barely concealing a raw, vulnerable core.

Her portrayal is vital to the production’s emotional power, but it is far from the only strength on display. The cast collectively brings a tough, unsentimental honesty to the staging, grounding the heightened emotions in human truth.

Set in 1920s Connecticut, the Tyrone family’s dilapidated farm is rendered in Tom Scutt’s striking design as a skeletal mess of ladders and timber. The open, rural landscape of the original is hemmed in by the Almeida’s unforgiving brick rear wall—suggesting confinement from the outset.

Farmer Phil Hogan (David Threlfall) concocts a crude plan to blackmail his landlord, the tortured James Tyrone Jr. (Michael Shannon), by encouraging his daughter Josie to seduce him. What follows is a moonlit encounter in which Josie and Jim drink, flirt, spar, and bare their souls—or perhaps only parts of them.

Besides: ambiguity of their intimacy is part of the play’s haunting power. Characters confront their own personal hell: it is as if illusion were a veil, and under it lay truth.

In the final act, the drama’s emotional core comes into full focus: Josie and Jim, two damaged, ‘misbegotten’ souls, are pushed to confront their truths under the cleansing glare of moonlight. It is harrowing, at times overwhelming—a testament to the play’s relentless excavation of loneliness, regret, and the hunger for redemption.

Frecknall’s direction exquisitely navigates these shifting moods, allowing space for stillness and silence without sacrificing emotional momentum. Jack Knowles’s lighting design is especially notable, amplifying the tension and tenderness with painterly precision.

“There’s only tonight, the Moon, and us,” howls Wilson near the play’s end, the line delivered not as a romantic overture, but as a grasp for connection. Her Josie is unforgettable—funny, bruised, defiant—and utterly sensitive.

For me, the three poetic hours whizzed by.

In effect, O’Neill’s genius was in finding that the depths of banality can unleash our shared demons.

The Moon for the Misbegotten runs at the Almeida theatre, London, until 16 August