Nuance Suffers Under O’Neill’s ‘Moon’

Right up there with the ol’ soft shoe, the ol’ hard sell is as American a tradition as . . . well, as Eugene O’Neill. No one sold harder than our poet laureate of self-loathing and guilt and foolish, beautiful dreamers.

Actors, good ones, often run into trouble when they’re trying to energize O’Neill on stage. Their instincts say “Sell! Sell!” when a scene may actually call for something beyond energy--something closer to a sense of trust in themselves, of burrowing inward. The technical challenges don’t come much bigger, either, when it comes to finding the rhythmic change-ups in the material, the musicality in all those heavy chords.

The current Laguna Playhouse production of “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” which O’Neill completed in 1943, isn’t bad. The hardscrabble 1923 Connecticut farmhouse inhabited by the Hogan family has been rendered tenderly and well by scenic designer Dwight Richard Odle. He gives us quite a moon, too--a looming, abstracted disc-like lunar surface at the back of the stage.

Going for larger-than-life zest, however, director Jessica Kubzansky’s ensemble ends up limiting the play’s dynamic range. The banter dominating the play’s first two (of four) acts comes at us with a sense of sameness; our ears aren’t being properly tuned for the big scenes to come.

O’Neill is everywhere these days. There’s a fine new “Iceman Cometh” on Broadway. In L.A. we have O’Neill Lite (comparatively), with Al Pacino redoing the late, compact one-act “Hughie” this summer at the Mark Taper Forum. “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” reemerges constantly from the fog. A major Broadway-bound revival of “A Moon for the Misbegotten” is planned for next season, playing Washington, D.C., and New York and reuniting the “Heiress” team of Cherry Jones and director Gerald Gutierrez.

O’Neill is everywhere, and he’s not getting any easier. Or less rewarding, when fully activated.

In “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” the “hulking” soul-of-Irish-womanhood Josie Hogan (Marjory Graue) has been living a pipe dream, acting like a slut when, in fact, she’s not. Her father, Phil (Sean G. Griffin), engineers a moonlight rendezvous for her and their landlord, the alcoholic Broadway sport James Tyrone Jr. (Philip Earl Johnson).

Two minor characters, the fleeing brother, Mike (James Caffery), and the sniffy neighbor, T. Stedman Harder (Tom Shelton), clear out of the way early. It’s all about the central threesome and, crucially, about the play’s third act, in which James and Josie talk and drink to their hearts’ discontent. And arrive at something like peace. (It’s the last word spoken in the play.)

Graue’s a big, youthful, good-looking woman, and her most effective moment comes at a key juncture: When Tyrone tells her he loves her, she looks hard and long before asking, “Do you, Jim?” Too often, though, Graue goes for what might be termed the hands-on-hips vocal intonation, peppy but superficial. Clearly talented, Graue’s simply going for the obvious too often here.

Johnson is stiff and tentative as Tyrone, in ways only occasionally intersecting with the character’s broken-down state. Griffin’s Phil Hogan is diverting enough, on the money with the physical work in the drunk scenes, though vocally a little monotonous.

Which isn’t a small matter, with this load of words. I love the central third-act encounter of “Misbegotten” as much as anything O’Neill ever wrote; it’s full of pitfalls (all that rhapsodizing over Josie’s “beautiful breast” gets a bit much) but loaded with honest, eloquent pain. We don’t feel enough of it in this serviceable, hard-working production.

* “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” Laguna Playhouse, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach. Tuesdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 2 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 and 7 p.m. (no 7 p.m. performance May 16). Ends May 16. $31-$38. (949) 497-2787. Running time: 2 hours, 55 minutes.

Marjory Graue: Josie Hogan

James Caffery: Mike Hogan

Sean G. Griffin: Phil Hogan

Philip Earl Johnson: James Tyrone Jr.

Tom Shelton: T. Stedman Harder

Written by Eugene O’Neill. Directed by Jessica Kubzansky. Set and costumes by Dwight Richard Odle. Lighting by Paulie Jenkins. Sound by David Edwards. Stage manager Alice Harkins.