Rach- I read that as a definite separation which I find so shocking and depressing. Think what they went through to finally get together again. Have so many  questions. And of course being a serious actor is a fine goal. I think of how depressing getting himself in the mood for this role  and being away from home must be for him sometimes twice a day.

My suggestion is we all bombard Hallmark Channel to     do a sequel of Straight From The Heart and help Andrew get his groove back. Look at Teri Polo- since SFTH she has become famous in those Family shows and now will probably become First Lady in West Wing. James Slater won an oscar last year and is still starring in Boston Legal. Rob Lowe has one after another starring him. Wouldn't you say Andrew needs a new Agent?

i tried to take that as meaning geographically... while he is doing his play. but it is so sad.

i adored Andrew when i was in my pre-teens, early teens, late teens. he seemed so perfect to me, opposite to the antics of the bratpackers. there was no dirt on him and he seemed so grounded. its been shocking to me to hear all this in the last few years...... rift with father..... kicked out of school...... drunk.... divorced.

but he is human. and still perfect!!!!!!

It is very sad to hear that. They seemed very happy. If this rumor is true, I am worried about thier son, Sam. However, he definitely needs a powerful agent! I guess when people get old, surlu they miss their hometown. Take care.

 

Where did this quote come from? I can't seem to find which article it is from. I would be so sad if it was true if they are separated. I met Andrew last Feb. when he was performing in "Fat Pig". I made the trip up to NY just to see him onstage and it was the greatest experience of my life. He was absolutely the kindest man I have ever met. We talked for a little bit and he graciously handled my enthusiasm with pure eloquance. His wife was there with him and she talked to my friend while I got the opportunity to share the same space with my idol. She was just as kind and patient as he. I would truly hate to see that they would separate because they compliment each other so well. So if you know or hear anything else on this rumor please let me know.

I took the article to mean separated geographically.  The way it is written, it seems to me they are saying he was reluctant to travel out of town for the play due to being away from his wife and son.

Yes! Thanks for the pictures! glad to see that they are together.

That pic was the best! that was my bday too, mar 5. How cool.

p/s Andrew already has 18 friend that have added him to their pages.

I'm happy to see their pictures. For me, Carol's belly seems big. Is she expecting their second child? or not?

You know I thought the same thing, that girl with Andrew at Elaines did look different than Carol..By the way I took down the myspace page.

I thought she looked very nice in those recent photos. Why did you take you webpage down Patti? Sorry I didn't respond to let you know how it was I have been really busy this past two weeks. You puot a lot of work into it to just take it off of there.

Hi Mary,

That Myspace is so addictive! I had 2 other accounts going besides Andrew's and I found myself playing on the computer a good part of the whole day! The weather will be warming up here soon and I won't be inside the house as much and I just didnt want that extra draw to the computer. Plus Andrew was very popular and people were contacting his profile daily..I didnt know what to do with them and their questions! tsk*

Engrossing McCarter Production of O’Neill’s
A Moon for the Misbegotten

Also see Bob's review of All My Sons

Kathleen McNenny and Andrew McCarthy
Although a work of fiction, Eugene O’Neill’s last play, A Moon for the Misbegotten, is a companion piece to his autobiographical masterpiece Long Day’s Journey into Night. Clearly not fictional is the character of James Tyrone, the alter ego for O’Neill’s weak, older brother Jamie in both plays. Moon is O’Neill’s heartfelt elegy for him.

The setting is the tumble-down Connecticut farmhouse of tenant farmer Phil Hogan (Jack Willis). It is early September, 1923, and the play's events transpire between noon and sunrise the following morning. Hogan is a domineering bully of a father. As the play begins, his son Mike (Peter Scanavino) is in the process of escaping his father’s domination by sneaking off the farm with the help of his tough, strong, giant of a sister, Josie (Kathleen McNenny). Mike’s two older brothers have long ago made similar escapes. Unlike her brothers, Jose is a match and more for their father.

Josie, strong, intimidating and saltily sharp tongued, loves their landlord, James Tyrone, Jr. (Andrew McCarthy), who has inherited the farm from his parents. James is a failed actor and dissolute alcoholic wastrel in perpetual mourning for his dead mother. Dead inside, James is as addicted to New York theatre district “tarts” as he is repulsed by the nature of his empty relationships with them. Incapable of either giving or accepting love, his strong feelings for Josie only add to his pain and misery.

Afraid that James is going to sell their farm to a very rich owner of an abutting estate who would toss him out, Hogan convinces Josie to seduce James into signing the farm over to them. Yet, this night, Josie will reach out to try to save James, no matter how overwhelming the odds against her success.

Kathleen McNenny integrates Josie’s strength and indomitability with her sadness and despair with ease and grace. Andrew McCarthy captures much of the haunted quality of James Tyrone. Their essentially naturalist performances contribute greatly to the accessibility and enjoyment of the play. However, there are depths of despair in these roles that McNenny and McCarthy never plumb. It is possible to find McNenny too attractive and not physically big enough for Josie. This may well be because of the indelible memory of the imposing Colleen Dewhurst in the role. However, I would point out that Dewhurst played Josie in the second NY revival of Moon, and that the role was played by Wendy Hiller in the original New York production. While Josie must be strong, a careful reading of the script allows her a certain, not clearly delineated level of attractiveness. Physically weak, Josie must not appear, and McNenny does not so appear here. Speaking of indelible performances, Jason Robards played James Tyrone, Jr. opposite Dewhurst.

Jack Willis plays Phil Hogan in an ingratiating manner which suggests that Phil’s mean and fearsome nature is mostly bluster. Jeremiah Wiggins as the rich neighbor and Peter Scanavino as the departing Hogan son contribute smooth turns.

Under Gary Griffin’s direction, this production is more likeable than despairing despite the overriding bleakness of O’Neill’s vision. Griffin stages at a moderate pace which lets the character defining, often richly humorous dialogue breathe. Although the production is certainly not definitive, it will allow easier access to the play for some audiences.

Eugene Lee, who designed the set for the 2000 Goodman Theatre production (which played on Broadway), has designed a large multilevel set of a ruin of a house and its surrounding property. The set is built out into the auditorium, and the seating has been reconfigured to allow a few rows of seats to be placed on either side of the forward extension, and facing it. This setting is most evocative, and brings Moon closer to the audience in the moderately sized Berlind Theatre. The excellent period costumes by Jess Goldstein, and the seamless, effective lighting by Jane Cox nicely complete the evening’s effectively visual design work.

On the day that A Moon for the Misbegotten is set, O’Neill’s brother Jamie lay hopelessly ill in a sanitarium, having effectively drunk himself to death after the death of their mother. Finally, with his deeply heartfelt last play, O’Neill found an eloquent path to comprehending and accepting his brother’s need to die.

A Moon for the Misbegotten continues performances (Tues.-Thurs. 7:30 pm/Friday. & Sat. 8 pm/ Matinees Sat. 3pm/Sun.2pm) through February 19, 2006 at the Berlind Theatre of the McCarter Theatre Center, 91 University Place, Princeton, NJ 08540, Box Office: 609-258-2787; on-line: www.mccarter.org.

Andrew will like this review.
Review: `A Moon for the Misbegotten'

The skeleton frame of the Hogan's squalid Connecticut farmhouse looms behind the simply furnished interior. Although dilapidated platforms, ramps, and stairs add a dimension of reality to the front yard of designer Eugene Lee's evocative setting, it is the impassioned human conflicts that take place within it that quickly grab our attention and hold it for almost three hours.

That this staging by director Gary Griffin is also filled with more aggressively boisterous comedy helps activate a layer in the play too often undervalued. Griffin, who directed the lauded mini-version of "My Fair Lady" at McCarter in 2004, and directed the current musical production of "The Color Purple" on Broadway, has found a nice balance between this great play's abject poignancy and its inherently wicked playfulness. If the funnier parts appear to be more emphatically emphasized, it is due, in part, to Griffin's spirited fresh vision.

Even in his final play offered for production, "A Moon for the Misbegotten," Eugene O'Neill relentlessly pursued the same ghosts that had haunted him throughout his life. A true poet of earthbound lyricism, O'Neill makes his flair for lengthy tirades both funny and fascinating through the autobiographical soul-searching that connects O'Neill's own older brother with this play's central character.

Set in 1923 on the Hogans' pig farm leased from the Tyrone family, the play concentrates on the scheme that Phil Hogan hatches for his daughter Josie to marry the perpetually inebriated, emotionally and psychologically crippled land-owner James Tyrone Jr. James and Josie's relationship, however, is irreparably hampered by his guilt and a lifetime of failures and her rooted investment in caring for her father.

Most persuasively, Griffin has cast the two leads younger than has been the norm, but closer to what O'Neill describes. Considering the actors that have to follow in the pathway that Jason Robards paved in Jose Quintero's landmark 1973 production, up to and including the one given by Gabriel Byrne in a 2000 production, it is a bit of a start at first to see this role in a new light, particularly entrusted to an actor who effectively employs a restrained dramatic delivery to complement a noticeably effete countenance. It's a daring undertaking for Andrew McCarthy to tackle the role of the physically eroding actor James Tyrone Jr.

McCarthy, however, comes very close to revealing a good many of the darker shadows of this superficially dashing knight-errant and the half-living shell of the deluded dreamer-survivor developed in O'Neill's companion piece, "Long Day's Journey into Night." Neurotic to be sure, but never completely willing to relinquish the alcoholic's roguish charm, McCarthy looks dapper with a yellow boutonniere in his brown pin stripe suit and spats. A mustache helps to add maturity to his still youthful face. Some may feel the lack of emotional sparks between the tormented Tyrone and the unloved and un-loveable Josie Hogan (Kathleen McNenny), but this explains the tarnished silver cord that still bonds James to his mother and Josie to her father.

As the pretending-to-be-wanton daughter of a pig farmer, the "scandal of the neighborhood," McNenny is, despite her bruised knees and dirt-smudged face, a very sexy, if frumpy, wench indeed. While far from fitting her self-description as an "ugly big lump of a woman," she carries around her (slightly padded) frame with a feisty assurance that recalls a young Maureen O'Hara. A good many laughs derive from the pleasure that McNenny gets deploying her fists and even a big stick.

In one scene her punch sends McCarthy tumbling precariously off a deck. McNenny is, in fact, dynamite, as she ably projects both a crusty facade and the passionate longing that propels Josie. It certainly isn't the fault of McNenny or McCarthy that the long-winded interludes in Act II take their toll. Nevertheless, at the performance I caught, an otherwise attentive audience stayed enthralled even as the play begins to reprocess many of the same sentiments.

An exhilarating presence in the production, particularly in expressing the Irish temperament of the play, is Jack Willis, whose almost whimsical demeanor as the blustery boozing Phil Hogan punctuates the drama without puncturing it. Jeremiah Wiggins is a hoot as T. Stedman Harder, the arrogant, condescending and rich land-owner neighbor who wants to buy the Hogan farm. Posturing in his riding britches and crop, he makes the most of his short comedic scene as he gets the brunt of Josie and Phil vigorously expressed ire.

Peter Scanavino gets some effective dramatic mileage as Mike Hogan, the young, disgruntled son who runs away from the farm and the pain of living there. The McCarter production team, including costumer Jess Goldstein and lighting designer Jane Cox, has craftily stirred up all that is rundown, moon-mad, and begotten about this tantalizingly tormented masterwork.

- Simon Saltzman