STAGE REVIEWS : Cast of ‘Misbegotten’ Plays It Right

Josie Hogan is a big woman, both in body and spirit. Earthy and tough, but with a buried tenderness for all things lost, she lives a life of noisy desperation on a tenant farm in Connecticut.

Jim Tyrone is a drunk, and that’s really that. He has the ways of the misspent Irish poet, part blarney, part longing, and he owns the land Josie and her father farm . He’s taken the wrong turn on just about every road.

When Eugene O’Neill decided to bring these two together in “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” he was aiming for a realistic love story, impure and rarely simple. Amid all the clanging aspects of the plot--which embroils Josie and her father in a scheme to get the farm from Jim, who they think has betrayed them--the focus finds these two struggling to find some joy and redemption.

The drama won’t work if we don’t feel that struggle. Fortunately, at Cal State Fullerton, director Alvin J. Keller and his capable cast get us involved. Keller understands the play’s rhythms, especially its naturalistic dialogue, and Arlyn Lynda McDonald as Josie and Forrest G. Robinson as Jim have a pretty good notion of what these people are about.

McDonald is not always clean with her Irish accent (there are a few times when she drops it altogether), and she is physically miscast--Josie is described as “so oversized she was almost a freak”--but these problems aren’t overly distracting.

As for his part, Robinson gives Jim the necessary doomed quality lurking under all the bluster. This is a man who Josie tells her father is “like a corpse,” and Robinson, with his slightly dreamlike voice and deliberate mannerisms, communicates that defeated pall.

All do their share of howling at the moon, but Josie’s father is the loudest. As Phil Hogan, Michael Denney overreaches every now and then but generally conveys the man’s strength and humor. In smaller roles, Greg Neagle has some good moments as the elitist neighbor, as does Timothy Pulice as Josie’s brother.

‘A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN’

A Cal State Fullerton production of Eugene O’Neill’s drama. Directed by Alvin J. Keller. With Arlyn Lynda McDonald, Timothy Pulice, Michael Denney, Forrest G. Robinson and Greg Neagle. Set and costumes by Lisa K. Hampton. Lighting by D. Silvio Volonte. Makeup by Abel Zeballos. Plays today through Saturday at 8 p.m., with a 2:30 p.m. Saturday matinee and a 5 p.m. Sunday show at the campus’s Recital Hall. Tickets: $4 to $6. (714) 773-3371.