April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Kevin Spacey is frequently mesmerizing as Jim Tyrone, the soused soul at the center of ``A Moon for the Misbegotten.'' Spacey is an actor playing an actor in this Broadway revival, imported from London, and so it's not surprising that he draws on a well-packed bag of actorly tricks.

But tricks they are, in this jarringly stylized production. The result is a fascinating evening -- the three hours pass in a flash -- that nonetheless makes a hash of a masterpiece.

Spacey has survived a bruising few seasons as artistic director of the Old Vic Theater Company (he's become so Britishized that he spells programme like that in his Playbill note to readers). He has made a specialty of Eugene O'Neill and this production was met with great acclaim when it opened last fall; it seemed to redeem him.

Jim Tyrone is a Broadway matinee idol gone to seed from a decadent life of carousing. The family farm is tended by Phil Hogan, a widower, and his daughter, Josie (the last of his sons has just departed). Josie has carried the torch for Jim and he, in his fashion, for her. During the afternoon and evening they spend together, mostly on the doorstep of the Hogan's miserable shanty and mostly getting more and more drunk, Jim reveals the guilty secret that prevents him from ever consummating his love for Josie.

McShack

Spacey is first undone by Bob Crowley's stylized mini- shack, which could not house a single person, let alone a family of six; these distorted perspectives are a specialty of his, though as he proves in ``Mary Poppins,'' he certainly can do realism when asked. The shack is backed by a refulgent sapphire- blue cyclorama with cotton-candy clouds that change hue as day fades into night and then morning. The effect is to suggest not so much an O'Neill melodrama as low comedy: ``Li'l Abner,'' perhaps.

Still, the power of the play lies in the sad, unfulfilled romance of Jim and Josie. Spacey has technique to burn, but it's hard to know who, exactly, he's playing here. When Josie kisses Jim on his first entrance, she remarks, ``There's no spirit in you -- it's like kissing a corpse.''

Spacey is neither corpse nor ghost; his quivering limbs reveal all too literally Jim's complaint that he has ``the heebie-jeebies'' from booze that no longer calms him. He grabs a bottle of Phil's best bonded bourbon not as a lifelong drinker would but instead like a Greenwich teenager who's just broken into Dad's liquor cabinet. And yet, unless you believe that Jim Tyrone is a dead man walking, the play just seems silly.

Town Tramp

Josie describes herself several times as an ``ugly cow,'' but Eve Best is hardly that. Josie is also a classic O'Neill heroine, advertised as the town tramp but in truth a virgin. In the greatest production of ``Moon,'' Josie was played by Colleen Dewhurst (to Jason Robards's Jim) and you could believe that she had the map of Ireland ``stamped on her face,'' as O'Neill wrote. Best looks, instead, as if not only the Connecticut dirt, but Josie's very life force have been donned like so much costumery.

Colm Meaney gets it right as the weathered, garrulous Phil. But like the train whistles that constantly intrude on the action, Howard Davies's staging is big on superficial effects yet piddling in its claim on Jim Tyrone's tortured soul.

``A Moon for the Misbegotten'' continues through June 10 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 W. 47th Street in Manhattan. Information and tickets, which are selling for as much as $600 a pair: +1-212-307-4100; http://www.brooksatkinsontheatre.com.

(Jeremy Gerard is an editor for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Jeremy Gerard in New York at jgerard2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 10, 2007 10:22 EDT