A Moon for the Misbegotten by Joy Carlin (review)

The Jewel Theatre Company's A Moon for the Misbegottenis a gem in many ways. Profoundly faithful to O'Neill's vision (as best we can surmise) and superbly executed in the tradition of psychoanalytic realism, this Moonbrought together some stellar Bay Area talent under Joy Carlin's direction, resulting in a fast-moving, hard-hitting manifestation that simultaneously sustained the urgency and suggested the datedness of a script that is nearly three-quarters of a century old.

The Jewel is Santa Cruz's only professional Equity theatre that operates year-round, the only game at that level in town for those who do not care to undertake the dangerous drive to San Jose or the long one to San Francisco. Since its inception in 2005, the Jewel has established a reputation for excellent play selection and high production values, particularly since its move from a tiny converted downtown storefront. Its new home, the custombuilt Colligan Theater, is a stunning and spacious 182-seat venue that was once a hide storage barn. It resides on a site (a former tannery) owned by the city and dedicated as an arts center, which also maintains lovely low-rent studios, classrooms, and loft residences for local artists. This is an appropriate venue for a company that is genuinely engaged with the community it serves and beloved for it. The Jewel's programming is omnivorous: audiences have turned out for Pump Boys and Dinettesand What the Butler Sawin the same season, Guys and Dollsand Master Class(a brilliant turn for Bay Area star Patricia Gallagher) in another, and SUDSand Breaking the Codein still another. Perhaps this broad appetite is what keeps its dedicated subscribers coming back in a town where ever-shifting demographics make too much specialization a danger.

Carlin (with the help of dramaturg Susan Myer Stilton, who kindly provided access to her actor's packet for this review) presented O'Neill's gritty character study of hard-drinking, hard-loving Irish immigrants, his class-mismatched Romeo and Julietfor alcoholic not-quite-lapsed Catholics, as a kind of holy offering to a grateful audience. Kent Dorsey's set was exquisitely crafted in painstaking accord with O'Neill's own penciled illustrations (see Eugene O'Neill at Work: Newly Released Ideas for Plays, ed. Floyd [1981], 379), with the humble Hogan house flaunting Josie's bedroom like a weary burlesque dancer hiking up a skirt to expose a well-turned if somewhat filthy knee. When the audience filed in, the decayed farmhouse was already glowing golden before a brilliant afternoon sky; Dorsey's lights painted the house as a captivating correlative to Josie, whose own ramshackle circumstances cannot hide her true beauty and worth. In just about the only slippage of devoted realism in the play, the inconvenient downstage wall was missing, revealing the farmhouse's interior as a colorful riot of crumbling turn-of-the-century Americana—including a handmade sampler that reads "May you be in Heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you're dead." It's the home of a hoarder desperate to control these items that were probably already junk when he bought them. Dorsey's house was so meticulously constructed that it was almost an actor itself—it sermonized to the pre-show audience about crushing regret and, against all reason, hope.

Carlin's approach to Moonwas faithful, at least to my expectations of what O'Neill might have liked to see (although I imagine this production was, gratifyingly, funnier than the script intended). Bay Area stalwart Diana Torres Koss sparkled as Josie, whose megalopsychia will not tolerate weakness or pretense in others but which, for some reason, nevertheless impels her to go along with her degenerate dad's insane sell-your-virtue-for-quick-riches scheme. The tradition of performing Josie has always been complicated: O'Neill describes her as "almost a freak—five feet eleven in her stockings...