Almeida Theatre – until 16 August 2025
Reviewed by Claire Roderick
4****
Rebecca Frecknall’s Midas touch creates magic in this Eugene O’Neill revival. The stellar cast make even the most overwrought moments of the plot feel vital.
A dilapidated Connecticut farm in the early 1920s is home to Josie Hogan (Ruth Wilson) and her father Phil (David Threlfall). Josie’s brothers have all left, unable to cope with Phil’s drunken domineering ways. The play begins with Josie helping her youngest brother (Peter Corboy) to escape as he gives unsolicited advice on her morals and behaviour as Josie has a bad reputation, which she gladly flaunts. Josie loves their neighbour Jim (Michael Shannon), and he loves her – a fact that Phil is well aware of and uses to his advantage. Jim and Phil drink heavily at the local tavern, and a drunken threat becomes the lynch pin in Phil’s machinations and manipulations as he tries to stop Jim selling their farm to their hated rich neighbour Harder (Akie Kotabe).
The first half of the play establishes the relationship between the three, with Josie and her father arguing, joking and scheming and entertaining Jim by gleefully tormenting Harder when he drops in. The underlying sadness of Josie and Jim is always made clear, and her reaction when Phil tells her that Jim has betrayed them turns to anger as she and her father plot to trap him and ensure that the farm will remain hers.
The second part is much more intense as Josie and Jim spend their night together under the moon and reveal their true selves. Most scenes are fairly static with the couple alternating between holding each other or sitting stiffly at a distance, and this is where Frecknall’s direction and vision create magic.
Designer Tom Scutt’s bare stage suggests the steps to the farmhouse and its interior, with just a chair and Josie’s dressing table inside. Surrounding this area are jumbled stacks of crates, planks and ladders – the barriers the characters have built for themselves and the opportunities for escape they never took. Lighting designer Jack Knowles has two lights travelling on loops above and around the stage, creating ever changing shadows and illuminating the couple’s faces brightly at the most emotionally heightened points. Simply beautiful.
Even with this cast, the torment O’Neill puts the characters through can wear you down, but there is so much humour and passion in this production that sweeps the audience along. Ruth Wilson is mesmerising as Josie – strong and fierce and then heartbreakingly pure and self-sacrificing as she realises what Jim needs and admits the truth about herself. Michael Shannon is devastating as Jim, a shell of a man drinking himself to death from guilt over his mother’s death. Stumbling and slurring but with occasional lyrical and giddy energy showing the spark of the man he used to be. David Threlfall is devilishly funny as the cantankerous and conniving Phil, hilarious even when at his most malevolent. The acts and tricks he pulls to manoeuvre those around him are a delight in Threlfall’s hands – making the betrayals sting even more.
This moving tale of love, freedom and sacrifice is the hottest ticket in town this summer.