Tickets are now on sale for a staging of Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten in Galway this autumn, as part of Druid’s ‘Strange Country: Ireland in America’ theatre theme for 2026.
O’Neill (d1953 ), a Nobel, Tony and Pulitzer prize-winning writer, is often credited with being a pioneer of realism in US theatre.
His A Moon for the Misbegotten is considered one of the great canonical works of the 20th century, and this production by Druid will run at the Town Hall Theatre from Monday, September 14, to Saturday, September 26.
Over the course of one day and night in 1920s rural Connecticut, Josie Hogan, the last of her immigrant Irish family stuck at home with her alcoholic father, and their anguished landlord, James Tyrone, long for escape; she from her life, he from his loss.
Directed by Garry Hynes, with set and costume design by Francis O’Connor, A Moon for the Misbegotten sees Druid return to the work of playwright Eugene O’Neill for the first time since 2007. The cast is Lorcan Cranitch, Rory Nolan, Marty Rea, Cathal Ryan, and Eileen Walsh.
The sequel to Long Day’s Journey into Night, and the last of O’Neill’s trio of largely autobiographical plays which reflect his complex relationship with Ireland, A Moon for the Misbegotten displays common threads with the opening play of the season, The Shaughraun, by Dion Boucicault.
These are two very different stories, set in rural landscapes on either side of the Atlantic. Both share themes of what it means to be Irish, negotiating for a place in the world, and love –familial, as fraught as it may be, and romantic.
“O’Neill is one of America’s greatest playwrights, but he is also the son of Irish emigrants, and many of the questions that animate his work — belonging, displacement, family, memory and inheritance — are deeply connected to the Irish experience,” says Hynes, the play’s director. “Druid is drawn to plays that place complex, flawed and resilient human beings centre stage, and few playwrights understand human contradiction as deeply as O’Neill.”
As with all Druid productions, A Moon for the Misbegotten will be produced in Galway at the company’s two workshops: costume in Nun’s Island and set design in Ballybane. Druid remains the only theatre company in Ireland with its own set workshop, preserving and developing theatre crafts.
Tickets go on sale today, Thursday, June 11, at 11am on www.druid.ie and www.tht.ie
