'A Moon for the Misbegotten' that packs some heft

In the Arden Theatre's production of

A Moon for the Misbegotten

, Grace Gonglewski, Philly theater's most reliable female workhorse, plays Josie Hogan, Eugene O'Neill's workhorse of a woman.

Whether crazed and naked as in Theatre Exile's Bug - which, like Moon, was directed by Matt Pfeiffer - or shattered, in Arden's Rabbit Hole, Gonglewski has a core strength that anchors a production. But here, the usually lithe actress quite literally adds weight to that forceful presence.

As written by O'Neill, Josie, a wild Irish American rose, is supposed to be a near-giantess, an earthy, substantial counterpoint to Mary Tyrone, the drug-addled mother of A Long Day's Journey into Night. Indeed, O'Neill's final play, and a sort of eulogy for his brother, Moon picks up a decade after the curtain closes on James Tyrone Jr. (Eric Hissom) of Long Day's Journey. James, now a good-natured, if tormented, drunk, rents land to Josie and her father Phil (H. Michael Walls).

Gonglewski wrings laundry, pumps water, and wields an ax with newly meaty forearms, filling up the porch of her tin-roofed shack, one hand on her ample hip, the other brandishing a stick. She's played Josie before, in 1998, and her comfort with the role is evident in the way she guides her cast mates through the script, much as Josie provides a safe haven for Phil, Jim, and the rest of the town's men.

Hissom plays up James' thirst for melodrama (among other intoxicants), though he occasionally shies his head away from Josie like a beaten dog, betraying the character's increasing fragility. Though their night under the moon (at one point, unfortunately, lit by Thom Weaver as though it were the afternoon sun), a night both Jim and Josie hope will be "different from any past night," rolls forward with an inexorable rhythm, Pfeiffer's direction focuses on performance, rather than depth of meaning.

While Hissom puts on a good show, we never lose the feeling that's it's still a show. Likewise, Walls is just short of scrappy enough (when we first see him, he's so pink and well-groomed it looks as if he just ran from the shower to the stage), and a scene in which the Hogans take on their Standard Oil scion neighbor (Allen Radway) plays strictly for laughs, with no tinge of the class conflict that endows the father and daughter with a sharper edge.

Still, Gonglewski brings enough heft - and here, I mean, emotional heft - to spare, carrying all those men, and Josie's considerable loneliness besides.

Through Feb. 27 at the Arden Theatre Company, Arcadia Stage, 40 N. Second St. Tickets: $29-$48. Information: 215-922-1122 or www.ardentheatre.com.EndText