#harold pinter

A Moon for the Misbegotten (2006-07) at the Old Vic and the Brooks Atkinson Theater

"[...] while Eve Best, a strong English actress, was superb as Josie, despite not being big enough. She is quite tall, but not nearly at the one hundred and eighty pounds called for in the script, 'as big and strong as a bull.'"

— Hornby, Richard. "Americans on the British Stage." Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be so Hated, by Gore Vidal. The Hudson Review 60, no. 1 (2007): 127–34.

"Expectations ran high for the Broadway audience in the Brooks Atkinson Theater at the last preview [...]. When performed in London the play received rave reviews [...]. The mounting of O'Neill's Misbegotten produced a change in London critical reaction to S., with glowing accounts of the production, especially the directing of Howard Davies and the acting of S. as Jim Tyrone, Eve Best as Josie Hogan, and Colm Meaney as Phil Hogan. [...] Davies adds to O'Neill's props a much-used outside water pump, and he gives Josie a clothesline for hanging the clothes which she washes onstage. Washing seems to be her main activity, and Davies, in a nice piece of direction, has Josie wash her brother Michael's hair in the opening scene, pointing to Josie's mothering instinct, what will come out at play's end when Jim Tyrone becomes the child. The first act, bathed in sunlight with a blue sky overhead, is marked by the realism of earthly behavior, by laughter both crude and mocking, by shouting matches between father and daughter—many of the words being lost—and by much talk about the whiskey, made onstage, that will be consumed throughout the play. In this act we witness the affection Jim and Josie have for each other, even though each is wearing a mask to hide the self, Jim the mask of a Broadway cynic, Josie of a wanton whore. [...] Before Jim's arrival onstage we witness Josie's constant activity and hear her verbal battles with her brother Michael and then her father. Much movement and shouting and anger and mockery and good humor, but also some softer thoughts when she mentions Jim Tyrone, the man she loves. Physically, Eve Best is not the Amazon woman that O'Neill wanted, and never got, for the role of Josie Hogan. (If a director can find a great actress who is five feet eleven, weights 180 pounds, oversize, more powerful than most men, with 'the map of Ireland stamped on her face,' by no means pretty but attractive because of her smile and her 'large, firm breasts,' 'all woman'—then grab her; she's your Josie.) Eve Best's good looks and high energy and natural charm made her a large presence onstage. The problem, for me, was not physical. Simply stated, she missed many chances to make O'Neill's words touch, or even be understood by the audience—which is surprising because of her reputation as one of England's finest actors. (Her Hedda Gabler won the Olivier Award for Best Actress, and she was nominated this year for her Josie Hogan.) In her movement or shouting or facing the wrong way, and even in those softer moments, Best prevented some important O'Neill words from having their full effect.

Let me offer one glaring example from the first act. After much of the talk, talk, talk in the first act—some good comedy, but overextended—Josie angrily shouts at her father, 'Shut up!' when she sees Jim Tyrone walking toward the stage, ready to make his welcome entrance. This is what she says: 'Look at him when he thinks no one is watching, with his eyes on the ground. Like a dead man walking slow behind his own coffin.' Eve Best spoke these words very quickly, looking back stage, thereby slurring words that demand emphasis and clarity. They were indistinct to me, and I was waiting on those words. O'Neill wants us to carry that image of Jim Tyrone through the whole play, and at play's end this 'dead' man will leave the stage, rather quickly, to get to that coffin (with the idea of 'coffin' having its own heavy significance because of Jim's story about his mother's coffin in the train's baggage coach). Josie's great discovery will be that Jim is indeed the dead man she is correctly evaluating when first she sees him, but only at play's end will she understand the full import of that evaluation of the man she loves. As spoken by Best the potent image of Jim as dead man following his coffin is never allowed to resonate because the words were lost. Hidden behind her exterior of gruff, solid, blustering woman and the mask og wanton whore Josie has a tenderness that Eve Best exploited only sporadically, rarely allowing us to feel her true inner self. Josie Hogan is O'Neill's most powerful and sympathetic portrait of a woman—'all woman.' Grounded in reality, strong and sensitive, the virgin playing the whore, lover and mother, feisty Irish daughter and Virgin Mary, Josie Hogan acquires the mythic proportions that make possible the crucial Pietà scene that the whole play is driving toward—Josie holding Jim to her breast, mother and son, peace and sadness and forgiveness in the air. The scene should have been magical and memorable. It wasn't, and here K. S. must share the responsibility with Eve Best. [...] Eve Best, listening and reacting to Jim's confession, was not altogether able to shake the rough exterior she presented throughout, although she did display genuine maternal concern for the man she held during the entire confession. [...] S. and Best were given the same O'Neill words, but they were not able to produce the same emotions or capture the scene's tragic lyricism. [...]"

— Berlin, Normand. "Traffic of Our Stage: 'A Moon for the Misbegotten.'" The Massachusetts Review 48, no. 4 (2007): 610–16.

"The Old Vic production was exciting like the play itself, showing high comedy as the play opened, and then gradually unfolding the deepening tragic history and guilt [...] and the celebrated British actress Eve Best, in her Broadway debut, played the lively and outspoken Josie Hogan. English director Howard Davies wisely ignored O'Neill's stage directions that say the actress playing Josie should be a short, overweight, and unattractive woman. [...] New to the New York audience, Ms. Best made a great hit as a beautiful, buxom, warm country girl who understands the torment that Jim is suffering, and gladly holds him against her ample bosom in an attempt to give him some peace and comfort. Ms. Best and Mr. S. played their roles well, [...] and Ms. Best as O'Neill's Earth Mother cuddling the despairing Jim in the play's Pieta scene. Her attempts to save Jim are without any hope of success since Jim has fallen too low to be saved by love. The best she can do is fervently to speak her benediction as the play closes that Jim slip into a peaceful death [...]. Ms. Best made an impressive debut in this O'Neill play, showing commendable stage presence and speaking her varied lines with all the concomitant tones and emotions: she was witty, she was sarcastic, she was sympathetic, she was loving, and she was deeply empathetic. The reaction of the audience indicated that she would be welcome back soon again."

— McLean, Robert Simpson. A Moon for the Misbegotten, by Howard Davies. The Eugene O'Neill Review 30 (2008): 176–77.

"Director Howard Davies cast Eve Best against type as Josie, not presenting her as the 'broad shouldered, ape-sized woman-man' that O'Neill's original text describes; instead, Best, perhaps more physically attractive than any previous Josies of recent memory, internalized her struggle with ugliness, playing Josie as a strong, resilient woman whose physical and emotional strength had allowed her to survive difficult social and economic challenges. Best countered her rough, tatterered exterior with an internal vulnerability and eternal hope—hope that she could attract Tyrone and that together they could overcome their insecurities and failings."

— Earnest, Steve. A Moon for the Misbegotten, by Eugene O’Neill and Howard Davies. Theatre Journal 60, no. 1 (2008): 148–49.

"While many of my peers and other critics have engaged with the recent Broadway production of A Moon for the Misbegotten, their responses often reveal a sexist preoccupation with Eve Best's appearance that borders on the reductive. The discrepancy between Eugene O'Neill's description of Josie and Best's physical presence is repeatedly noted, sometimes in terms that implicitly frame her attractiveness as a liability. [...] This emphasis rarely issues in sustained analysis. Instead, it remains at the level of observation, collapsing the performance into a largely uninteresting question of physical suitability. Furthermore, it echoes a longer practice of evaluating female performers primarily in terms of their bodies rather than their work. [...] Such readings are gendered, and they are analytically impoverished. By concentrating on whether the actor matches the written description, they neglect the ways performance inevitably mediates, complicates, and reconfigures the text. [...] This discrepancy, however, is more productively understood as an opportunity. It invites a set of questions that are both elementary and far-reaching: to what extent are O'Neill's stage directions to be taken literally? How closely should performance adhere to the physical specifics of the text? And, more importantly, what might be gained when it does not? An actress who does not conform to the playwright's description can open up new ways of understanding the character. Rather than undermining Josie's credibility, such casting reorients attention toward other aspects of her identity. [...] It allows us to question longstanding interpretive traditions, to reconsider the play's expressionist and modernist tendencies, and the place of O'Neill's work in contemporary performance. [...]"

— My grandmother, Ph.D.

The Homecoming (2008) at the Cort Theater

"The Broadway production of The Homecoming, produced by a total of thirteen different organizations, has a mixed English and American cast, all of whom were impeccable. [...] The tall, stunning English actress Eve Best, last seen in New York as Josie against K. S.'s Jamie in A Moon for the Misbegotten, was sexy and mysterious as Ruth, the wife, mother, and whore who eventually conquers Max and the rest of the male household."

— Hornby, Richard. "Beckett at 102." Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett. The Hudson Review 61, no. 1 (2008): 165–71.

"[...] the 2007 American production [...] opened in the Cort Theater to a very positive reception, deservedly so. [...] Interrupting Lenny's attempt to mock Teddy's philosophical pretensions—Lenny is playing with the stale idea of whether a table is more than a table, philosophically—Ruth says these words, which demanded added attention because they were spoken so seductively by Eve Best: 'Look at me. I... move my leg [...]' Esparza's Lenny is no match for Ruth, played with confidence by Eve Best, who seems throughout the play to be walking a predetermined path, cool, completely in charge of herself and unruffled by the remarks of others, almost in a trance at times. [...] Esparza projects a softer side, less threatening, a bullying boy, quite vulnerable, a too-easy loser in the clash with Ruth, emitting little sexual heat in his dance with Ruth and in their kiss. When Ruth calls him Leonard, she becomes the mother who dominates. She tells him: 'Sit on my lap [...]' Ruth laughs and then drains the glass, for me the high point of Eve Best's performance. She seemed to be drinking forever, taking it all in, so to speak, and at that moment the audience realizes that Ruth will be the ultimate winner, in her bout with Lenny and in all her relationships with the family. She will play all the roles a woman can play, especially Mother and Whore, a combination that Pinter and other dramatists before him, like O'Neill, exploit. [...]