Having made her name by working through Tennessee Williams’s core plays, the Almeida’s Rebecca Frecknall now seems to be lining up the rest of the mid-twentieth century American canon. She’s already directed Cabaret and has Miller’s Death of a Salesman booked in at the National Theatre in a couple of years; and now she tries her hand at Eugene O’Neill.
A Moon for the Misbegotten is O’Neill’s final play, that serves as a sequel to his great autobiographical work Long Day’s Journey Into Night (although somwhat confusingly the author famously didn’t allow the first play to be produced in his lifetime).
Less bleak than the first work, A Moon… is set on an isolated, crumbing Connecticut farm and follows a group of characters who live or visit the place. Ruth Wilson will play Josie Hogan, the quick tongued daughter of tenant farmer Phil Hogan; Michael Shannon will play their grieving, alcoholic landlord James Tyrone Jr, aka an older version of Jamie Tyrone from Long Day’s Journey. Shannon actually played the role in a 2016 Broadway production of Long Day’s Journey, meaning this will potentially serve as a sequel for him, if not for many audience members.
