Ruth Wilson and David Threlfall in A Moon for the Misbegotten [Marc Brenner]

A SEQUEL of sorts to Long Journey’s Day into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s final play A Moon for the Misbegotten is a layered exploration of addiction and self-sabotage, and the walls we erect to protect our fragile egos.

On an arid Connecticut farm in the 1920s, Josie (Ruth Wilson) lives with her cantankerous, alcoholic father, Phil (David Threlfall). Her older brothers have long since abandoned the homestead; at the start of the play, her younger brother Mike (Peter Corboy) is preparing to join them.

A tenant farmer, Phil worries that his landlord-neighbour Jim Tyrone (Michael Shannon) will renege on his promise to sell him the land. When Phil learns that another neighbour, Harder (Akie Kotable), has made a higher offer on the farm, he enlists Josie in a scheme to trap Jim into marriage.

Yet Jim and Josie have long harboured feelings for one another. Over the course of one moonlit night, they drop their masks and reveal their true feelings.

Jim, a failed actor lost in a vortex of guilt and shame after his mother’s death, drinks to numb his pain. Josie, who has spent her life battling societal constraints in a man’s world, works the farm alongside her father and projects a tough, brash exterior to conceal her vulnerabilities.

The performances are flawless in Rebecca Frecknall’s terrific production – so absorbing you could hear a pin drop during the two central exchanges – Josie and her father in the first half, and Jose with Jim in the second. The peeling back of their defences proves achingly tender.

Tom Scutt’s design recreates a rundown farmhouse with discarded timber and ladders stacked around the stage, while Jack Knowles’ clever lighting suggests the arc of the moon and the inescapable approach of dawn.

Recommended.

Until August 16
Almeida.co.uk