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Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Rise and Shine
It was worth the wait.
Twenty years ago I slept through the good part. I could have bought or borrowed the script, but I chose to wait for a rerun. Which never happened.
It was a PBS production of Eugene O'Neill's "A Moon For the Misbegotten." Jason Robards, Jr. played Jim Tyrone, Colleen Dewhurst played Josie Hogan, and Ed Flanders was her father Phil.
Tyrone, a so-so actor who can't live up to his famous father's reputation, has inherited the family property which includes the Hogan pig farm. Josie's totally crushed out on him. Her ne'er-do-well dad has a scheme for Josie's desires to be fulfilled and the farm remain unsold to a greedy rich neighbor.
On this full moon night, he'll get Jim roaring drunk (easy to do since he's a lush) and let Josie bed him down. In the hangover light of dawn, Jim will feel so guilty he'll do anything to placate the irate old man.
So, the good part...
Halfway through the play, Jim and Josie tease each other on the front porch of Hogan's hovel. They joke and threaten with push-me-pull-you tension, dancing a tentative pas de deux. Will they or won't they?
For twenty years I had no idea. Cuz that's when I went to sleep.
I came to for the last five minutes or so. Bright dawn. On the porch again. Waking up cradled in Josie's muscular arms, Jim boozily asks if he did her wrong last night. She says no, but you gotta think yes. He finally exits left, and in from the right comes Phil. He and Josie set things right between them and you just know the farm's going to remain in their hands and somehow everything will turn out right.
Well.
This Sunday afternoon I sat in the second balcony and saw the whole thing in living color. ACT's last performance featured Marco Baricelli as Jim, Robin Wiegert as Josie, and Raye Birk as Phil. It was Marco's ACT swan song before he moves to Manhattan's bright lights. Robin plays Calamity Jane on HBO's "Deadwood." And Raye's a utility player at ACT. Their performance was well worthy of our standing ovation.
So, you wonder, what was the missing good part?
For one, besotten Jim confesses to earth mother Josie that he created a family catastrophe years before by getting drunk when he most desperately needed to stay sober. Forgiveness and reconciliation were mere dream wishes. For another, he wants so badly to have sex with Josie, and she with him, but that dreadful pas de deux goes on and on and on.
I'd better leave it there.
Except... When Jim walks off, Josie waits enough beats for him to be out of earshot, and says after him, "May you have your wish and die in your sleep soon, Jim darling. May you rest forever in forgiveness and peace."
She blesses him! Even if he can't see or hear it, she can and so can we.
They tell us O'Neill wrote this play as his own reconciliation with Jamie O'Neill, his so-so actor of an older brother, who had drunk himself to death years after his alienated mother died. This is Eugene's posthumous olive branch to his brother, and a potent salve for his own family wounds as well.
God give us the grace to forgive and be forgiven face to face. Give us the chance to gaze at love's glowing face, and to hear its lilting voice, long before we nod off one last time. Save us from sleeping through the best part of them all.
posted by Jack Buckley at
2:57 PM
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