The Theater: Moon in Columbus

The culture-conscious citizens of Columbus, Ohio support three little-theater groups, a good art gallery, a vigorous symphony orchestra and, this season, some 50 concerts. Even so, the world premiere last week of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten was Columbus’ big cultural and social event. Undiscouraged by bitter weather, the city’s elite honored it as such.

Polished cars filed past the doors of the Hartman Theater to fill the house to capacity ; in the frosty air, flashbulbs popped at minks and orchids and opera hats. Mrs. James Dunn (wife of the Cinemactor, one of the leading players) arrived in a halo of roses and a black satin dress. White tie & tails mingled with business suits, and some sweater-bearing bobby-soxers craned their necks in vain for a look at Author O’Neill (he never attends his openings, and stayed in Manhattan). Ohio’s Governor Thomas J. Herbert took his place in a box—and the play began.

Frank & Bitter. There are only five actors in O’Neill’s new play, and three of them carry the whole of it. The three: James Dunn as a drunken bachelor landlord; Mary Welch as a big Connecticut hill girl; J. M. Kerrigan as her conniving, Irish tenant farmer father. The play tells of Dunn’s blind quest for redemption from a hell of liquor and women; of Miss Welch’s efforts to make him happy and to alleviate her own hell as an outsized woman; of her father’s willingness to make something out of it, mainly money.

The general feeling was that A Moon for the Misbegotten is a far more impressive play than The Iceman Cometh. There was also a feeling that like Iceman, Moon will run into censorship troubles if & when it tries to shine on Boston (see PEOPLE). The play is pretty frank in general and the Irish farmer has some bitter things to say in particular about Standard Oil, churchgoers, English royalty. Moon is of hardly more than conventional length, but there was general agreement that it could stand some cutting. As a piece of writing it is rich in poetry. As drama, it puts a heavy burden on its three main actors. For minutes on end the only action is the moving of a chair, and all the significant events have occurred long before the curtain rises.

Beautiful Ugliness. Samuel T. Wilson, Columbus Dispatch drama critic and dean of Columbus reviewers, wrote that Moon is “the playwright’s present towering achievement as a dramatic craftsman and above all as a poet . . . full of sentiment, music and meaning, warmth of human observation and comment, and vast sorrowfulness.” Bud Kissel of the Columbus Citizen disputed: “A competent cast that never muffed a line nor missed a cue wasted their talents on an unimportant play.” But Mary McGavran of the Ohio State Journal called the play “beautiful in its very ugliness.” And William F. McDermott of the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote: “A harsh, powerful play … It contains some of the best and most touching writing of the greatest American playwright.”

Nearly everyone agreed that it was still rough in spots. But that was to be expected at a world premiere, normally synonymous with a tryout opening. A Moon for the Misbegotten will do more than try out before it reaches Broadway; it will make a considerable tour of the Midwest. This week, Cleveland; thence to Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis. It may not come to Broadway at all before fall.