We're not even into the final year of Rupert Goold's programming yet but the Almeida stage already looks like the movers are in: Tom Scutt's design for
A Moon for the Misbegotten piles up planks, pillars, old props and broken doorframes to create the multilevel set for Eugene O'Neill's final play, a spin-off from
Long Day's Journey Into Night. The alcoholic older son from that play, James Tyrone Jr (Michael Shannon) left a failing Broadway career for life as a landlord in rural Connecticut, where he rents out a worthless piece of farmland to Phil Hogan (David Threlfall.) The old farmer's manipulative ways and use of them as free labour has seen all his children leave him except for sole daughter Josie (Ruth Wilson,) and he's also made an enemy of his wealthy neighbour (Akie Kotabe.) Now a rumour has reached him that the millionaire has a plan to get rid of him once and for all: Offer James well over the odds to buy the land from him, so he can turf out the tenants.
