Beth Wynstra Archives - The Play Podcast

100 – A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill

by Douglas Schatz | Aug 13, 2025 | Podcast Episodes

Michael Shannon as Jim, and
Ruth Wilson as Josie
A Moon for ther Misbegotten
Almeida Theatre, London, July 2025
Photo by Marc Brenner

100 – A Moon for the Misbegotten by Eugene O’Neill

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A Moon for the Misbegotten is the last of the trilogy of stirring autobiographical works that Eugene O’Neill wrote in the decade or so before his death in 1953, that also includes Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh. At the heart of the play is a tortured love story between Josie Hogan, a farmer’s daughter with a brash temperment and a promiscuous reputation, and Jim Tyrone, who lives next door and also happens to be her father’s landlord. Jim harbours feelings for Josie, but he is plagued by shame at his own wasted life, and by guilt and grief in the wake of his mother’s death, demons that he vainly tries to dampen with determined drinking.

A Moon for the Misbegotten is a sort of epilogue to O’Neill’s masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night, as the character of Jim is none other than the same James Tyrone, son of James and Mary Tyrone, whose tragic family trauma was played out over the long night almost exactly eleven years before.

As we record this episode a new production of A Moon for the Misbegotten is on stage at the Almeida theatre in London, the first in the capital for nearly twenty years. It is directed by Rebecca Frecknell and stars Ruth Wilson and Michael Shannon as the doomed couple.

I am delighted to be joined to explore the play by O’Neill expert, Beth Wynstra, who is an Associate Professor of English at Babson College in the United States.

Win £100 of Theatre Tokens!

To mark the milestone of our 100th episode I’m delighted to say that Theatre Tokens has been generous enough to offer our listeners the chance to win a prize of £100 worth of theatre tokens. Theatre Tokens is a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to encourage people to visit the theatre in the UK. Their tokens can be used at over 270 venues around the country, and all of the money generated by the sale of tokens is reinvested into the theatre industry. The tokens are available as Gift Cards and as eGifts, and they have no expiry date.

For your chance to win, all you need to do is identify what the most popular episode of the 100 we have released to date has been. Simply email us at plays@theplaypodcast.com with the name of the episode that you think has been listened to more times than any other. The competition will close at midnight on the 30^th of September 2025.

Thank you to Theatre Tokens for supporting this episode and for promoting theatre. Good luck!

Beth Wynstra

Beth Wynstra is an Associate Professor of English at Babson College in the United States. Beth is the author of Vows, Veils, and Masks: The Performance of Marriage in the Plays of Eugene O’Neill, and is also the Vice President of the Eugene O’Neill Society.

Recommended Play

Beth recommended two plays:
John Proctor is the Villain by Kimberley Belflower, and
Electricidad by Luis Alfaro.

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115 – The Dance of Death by August Strindberg

Oct 6, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death is set in a remote army base on the coast of Sweden, where an army captain and his wife are trapped together in an unhappy marriage. The captain, bitter at his lack of promotion, and his wife, frustrated at having been forced to give up her career as an actress, occupy their empty hours tearing into each other in a brutal dance of mutual cruelty.

Strindberg’s scorching portrait of marital strife was written in 1900, but has had a lasting influence. Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg, “the mad inventor of modern theatre”, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of marital discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O’Neill, and John Osborne.

Sir Richard Eyre adapted and directed a wonderful production of Dance of Death at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year, and I am delighted that Sir Richard joins me in this episode to guide us through Strindberg’s blistering onslaught on marriage.

114 – Love’s Labour’s Lost by William Shakespeare

Sep 22, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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William Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost is described on the title page in the first publication of its text in 1598 as “A Pleasant Conceited Comedie.” I imagine that the epithets were intended to highlight the play’s courtly aesthetic, its frothy merry-go-round of courtship, and above all perhaps, its ostentatiously intricate word play. For it is a play rich in the love and perils of language.

I am joined to assay Shakespeare’s conceited comedy by the Artistic Director of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames, Tom Littler. In the summer of 2026 Tom adapted and directed a magical double bill of Shakespeare, producing Love’s Labour’s Lost and Much Ado About Nothing in repertory, and staging them both ‘en plein air’.

113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Aug 24, 2026 | Podcast Episodes

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Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia, is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.

As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.