There’s a moon out tonight:
Brother Augustine Towey on Misbegotten lovers, Mass, and more
 |
|
Brother Augustine Towey and the
poster for ICTC’’s Misbegotten. |
Year Two of Irish Classical’s five-year Eugene O’Neill retrospective finds the acclaimed company taking on A Moon for the Misbegotten, one of the Irish-American playwright’s most popular works (and the subject of a recent West End/Broadway revival masterminded by Kevin Spacey). The first rehearsal was still weeks away when I chatted in September with guest director Brother Augustine Towey about the production—along with another compelling project he’s working on simultaneously.
A Moon for the Misbegotten is often described as a sequel to Long Day’s Journey Into Night [which ICTC produced last year], because it picks up one of the characters from the earlier play and places him in a completely different setting eleven years later. How necessary would you say it is to know Long Day in order to appreciate Moon?
 |
|
Cast members Brian Riggs
and Catherine Eaton. |
The early acts of the play read almost like a comedy, from the basic premise to the banter between the various characters, and then it all takes a very dark turn. How do you plan to approach the emotional tone of the piece?
That’s exactly right; it is set up as a comedy at the beginning, but I think the tone of the play in general is romantic. In the canon of O’Neill’s work, according to his biographers, it is one of the plays of mourning—and it is that, but I just think it’s one of the great love stories of the American theater. It’s a doomed love story, but so is Romeo and Juliet, and it’s beautiful in that sense, full of the kind of poetry only O’Neill could write and characters only he could [create]. I think when it gets too elegiac or too mournful, it becomes sodden and uninteresting to watch—and these are very lively characters.
The plot is simple, there are only three major characters and a single set, and yet the show has a fairly long running time. We hear so much about Americans’ short attention spans; how does a 21st century production deal with those factors?
I don’t have any great answer to that, frankly. I just know what I will do with the script. First of all, I have wonderful actors. Between Brian [Riggs] and Catherine [Eaton] and Gerry [Maher], they’ll be able to make this play whole. That’s all you need. We’ll make it as interesting as we can without perverting the real sense of the play. I’m not cutting anything. I never saw the recent New York production; I understand it worked [but] it went so fast you could hardly understand some of the actors, and I don’t want to do something like that.
 |
|
Last year’s Irish Classical production
of Long Day’s Journey Into Night |
When I was younger, I usually worked on a couple at a time—and here I am, now that I’m older, working on two [again], because I’ll be doing Moon for the Misbegotten and Bernstein’s Mass [a theater/music/dance piece first staged in 1971] at the same time.
What can you tell us about Mass?
Well, first, that it’s the WNY premiere; it’s never been done around here. I’m happy to be working again with Opera Sacra, who are producing it.
I remember Mass as very much a product of its time, which was also the era of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar. What do you do with it now: do you update it, or play it as a period piece?
We’re doing it in a church, so we’re staging it kind of like a liturgy, because it is a mass. I think we’re going to try and do some of it more contemporary, rather than reincarnating the seventies feel. I saw that original production, and it was kind of Godspell-y, kind of feely-touchy, so I don’t know that we’re quite doing that, but we’re going to try and make it have its point. If anything, it is absolutely gorgeous music; it’s wonderful, wonderful music all the way through.
Ron Ehmke is associate editor of Spree. A Moon for the Misbegotten runs from November 2 to December 2 at the Andrews Theatre (625 Main St.); for more info call 853-4282 or visit www.irishclassicaltheatre.com. Leonard Bernstein’s Mass is at St. Joseph’s University Church (3269 Main St.) November 16-18. For more information, call Father Jack Ledwon at 861-7069.
Back to the Table of Contents
Back to Top