Moon for the Misbegotten
by Eugene O’Neill
October 2011
Director: Whit Wales
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Set Design: Kim Napoleone
Carpentry and Painting: Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School
Sound Design: Robin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: Whit Wales
Cast:
Josie Hogan…..Jessie Olson
Mike Hogan…..Eric McGowan
Phil Hogan…..Mark Patrick
James Tyrone, Jr…..David Anderson
Stedman Harder…..Eric McGowan
A Moon for the Misbegotten, with its finely drawn portraits of the hard-drinking, suspicious, and quick-witted Phil Hogan, his tough yet feminine and vulnerable daughter Josie, and the alcoholic failed actor Jim Tyrone, is both dark comedy and deeply touching love story.
Set in rural Connecticut near the start of the Great Depression, the play chronicles one afternoon and evening in the lives of the two misbegotten lovers Josie and Jim. Phil Hogan is an immigrant, widowed tenant farmer, and during the course of the afternoon he becomes concerned that Jim, the owner of the farm, is going to sell the farm to a rich neighbor whom Hogan despises (and also comically belittles in one fast-paced scene). Hogan’s suspicions taint the start of the night the lovers spend together, an evening which reveals as much about the chasms separating the lovers as about the desires drawing them together.Moon for the Misbegotten
THEATER REVIEW
By Paul Kolas: Worcester Telegram & Gazette
October 15, 2011
The play focuses on the often-overlooked role of X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA while working at King’s College London, 1952,
4th Wall debut shines with O’Neill’s “Moon”
“WHITINSVILLE — Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” is a masterpiece of confession and denied expiation, a dramatic and comedic aria . . .
It’s a heady play for a new theater group to take on, but 4th Wall Stage Company’s inaugural production was a stunning triumph of acting, directing and staging on Saturday evening, a gripping portrayal of despair and how its three main characters try to exorcize their demons in their own distinct ways . . .
Anderson is superb at playing the actor . . .
Whit Wales’ sensitive direction here results in a lovely, poignant tableau . . .
Olson plays Josie with a fine mix of defensive intimidation and vulnerability . . . She and Anderson circle around each other wonderfully with their lies and half truths . . .
Patrick’s magnificently realized Phil Hogan is a raucous, unceasingly entertaining elixir . . . He plays the “crazy old billy goat” with spectacular oration and gesture, owning Act 1 with Hogan’s consummate Irish blather. It’s a delight to watch Olson rib him with casual, heard-it-before derision. It’s a father-daughter act laced with humor and some kind of love.
Patrick and Anderson are also a potent match as the actor and the conniver sharing a bottle and second-guessing each other.
McGowan shows his versatility as both Josie’s raffish brother Mike, and the amusing dandy of a neighbor, Harder.
Set designer Kim Napoleone’s rustic, ramshackle of a farmhouse is a marvel of detail, enhanced by Wales’ crepuscular lighting.
It’s a smashing debut by 4th Wall Stage Company.”
The Savannah Disputation
The Savannah Disputation by Evan Smith
Director: Frank Bartucca
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Set Design: Kim Napoleone
Carpentry and Painting: Blackstone Valley Regional
Vocational Technical High School
Sound Design: Robin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: David Anderson
Stage Manager: David Anderson
Sound and Light Operator: David Anderson
Cast:
Melissa…..Melissa Earls
Mary…..Robbin Joyce
Margaret…..Betty Kristan
Father Murphy…..Ed Dunn
February 2012
Religious faith is a complicated business and sometimes, as Savannah Disputation shows, a funny business also. Two elderly sisters forget all about southern hospitality when a door-to-door evangelist comes knocking, and in this blissfully entertaining comedy we get a glimpse into the hearts and minds of four people grappling with doubt, fear, loneliness, and regret about paths not taken. Throw into the mixture a priest who loves banana pudding and an occasional scotch whisky and the stage is set for an evening of wit, theology and plenty of laughs.
The Savannah Disputation
THEATRE REVIEW
By Paul Kolas: Worcester Telegram & Gazette
February 5, 2012
“NORTHBRIDGE — Nothing inspires fevered debate more than religion and politics. Evan Smith’s “The Savannah Disputation” takes on the former with a mix of humor and pedantry.
4th Wall Stage Company’s impressively acted production, under Frank Bartucca’s earnest direction, is top-heavy with laughter . . .
. . . the laughs are plentiful, Joyce milking every one of her lines with beautifully timed and inflected bile.
. . . Buttons are pushed on all sides, and when Mary’s are pushed beyond her limit, Joyce gives us a mesmerizing, moving revelation of the hurt, hopelessly self-aware woman hiding behind her brittle exterior. It’s an excoriating monologue that drew deserved applause . . .
. . . Chances are “The Savannah Disputation” will inspire your own debate.”
Long Day’s Journey Into Night
by Eugene O’Neill
May 2012
Director: Whit Wales
Producer: Frank Bartucca
Set Design: Whit Wales and David Anderson
Sound Design: Robin Gabrielli
Lighting Design: Whit Wales
Photography: Mary Dennis
Stage Manager: Tasha Matthews
Sound and Light Operator: Cate Agis
Cast:
James Tyrone…..Frank Bartucca
Mary Cavan Tyrone…..Lorna Nogueira
James Tyrone, Jr…..David Anderson
Edmund Tyrone…..Eric McGowan
Cathleen…..Rachel Morandi
Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama, has long been considered a great classic of the American Stage and O’Neill’s masterwork. Only a handful of plays as accurately portray a family so tightly bound and yet so painfully torn apart by their love for one another.
One day in the life of the tortured Tyrone family unleashes a cascade of emotions as they learn that one son has consumption and has to go to a sanatorium. All four family members, each plagued by addiction and each desperately striving to hold onto love and hope, clash in a world of contrasts, of sudden outbursts and smoldering frustration, in this deeply autobiographical document. Theirs is a world of Shakespearean grandeur and tragedy offset by an absurdity of trivialities. In this one day they both confront and avoid the physical and emotional realities of their lives in an escalating struggle which leaves each family member weary and numb.
In Harold Bloom’s brilliant introduction to the play he states: “The helplessness of family love to sustain, let alone heal, the wounds of marriage, of parenthood, and of sonship, have never been so remorselessly . . . portrayed, and with a force of gesture too painful ever to be forgotten by any of us.”a
4th Wall offers up a masterful production of ‘Journey’
THEATER REVIEW
By Paul Kolas TELEGRAM & GAZETTE REVIEWER
‘Long Day’s Journey Into Night’
“WHITINSVILLE — 4th Wall Stage Company resoundingly confirmed on Mother’s Day why Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” is rightly regarded as one of the greatest works of the American theater. It’s a magnificent portrait of a family wounding and healing itself in equal measure, and in the hands of Whit Wales’ breathtakingly stringent direction, you will be riveted, stunned and devastated by how deeply his cast burrows into the terrifying dark and ephemeral light of this autobiographical masterwork. Lorna Nogueira’s splendidly diaphanous rendering of Mary Cavan Tyrone made this particular Mother’s Day painfully ironic . . .
One of the most unforgettable moments, of the many in this production, is watching Anderson implode in the last act of this four-act play, which Wales has wisely chosen not to cut. Jamie has come back from a bout of drinking and whoring, making Edmund laugh hysterically at his recounting of his activities, but then things turn ugly when Jamie shoves Edmund and tells him, “the best part of me wants you to fail.” Anderson shakes you with an staggering demonstration of pure, raw emotion, teetering back and forth between raging jealously, self-hate, and blubbering brotherly love . . .
This is an actor’s paradise, ripe for the plundering . . .
McGowen is wonderful as Edmund, drawing great empathy as the family’s designated peace-keeper, as much as this broken family is capable of having one. He and Anderson play the sibling rivalry card with an exquisitely rendered clash of affection and resentment . . .
Nogueira’s Mary is a tremulous flame of hope and memory struggling to keep from going out, carrying the damaging weight of her three men on her shoulders . . .
It’s a performance of shattering intimacy, one that will follow you out of the theater and haunt you the next day. O’Neill said “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” was “written in tears and blood.” This stellar production makes one believe that.”
