Kevin Spacey Finds Booze, Love, Peace on O'Neill's Moonlit Farm

Kevin Spacey is frequently mesmerizing as Jim Tyrone, the soused soul at the center of A Moon for the Misbegotten. Spacey is an actor playing an actor in this Broadway revival, imported from London, and so it's not surprising that he draws on a well-packed bag of actorly tricks.

But tricks they are, in this jarringly stylized production. The result is a fascinating evening -- the three hours pass in a flash -- that nonetheless makes a hash of a masterpiece.

Spacey has survived a bruising few seasons as artistic director of the Old Vic Theater Company (he's become so Britishized that he spells programme like that in his Playbill note to readers). He has made a specialty of Eugene O'Neill and this production was met with great acclaim when it opened last fall; it seemed to redeem him.

Jim Tyrone is a Broadway matinee idol gone to seed from a decadent life of carousing. The family farm is tended by Phil Hogan, a widower, and his daughter, Josie (the last of his sons has just departed). Josie has carried the torch for Jim and he, in his fashion, for her. During the afternoon and evening they spend together, mostly on the doorstep of the Hogan's miserable shanty and mostly getting more and more drunk, Jim reveals the guilty secret that prevents him from ever consummating his love for Josie.

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