On a ramshackle Connecticut farm, Josie Hogan (Karla Kash) has packed a bag for her youngest brother Mike (Brandon Walker), so he can follow his brothers and escape from their tyrannical father. Josie is tired of Mike’s preachy ways anyway, and knows he’ll never be anything more than his father’s slave if he stays.

So Josie and her father Phil (Jonathan McMurtry) remain on the farm together, two Irish-American peas in a pod, whose method of communication is insults and threats. They love confusing the opposition with Irish blarney and survive by a variety of small scams.

Josie, a large woman who sees herself as unattractive, wears her reputation for promiscuity as a badge of honor. “I don’t want a decent man,” she says. “They’re no fun.”

North Coast Repertory Theatre presents Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten through Feb. 11, directed by David Ellenstein, the third in an autobiographical trilogy that also includes The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night, Moon was the last play published during O’Neill’s life.

The plot questions at hand are two: Will the property be sold out from under them by owner Jim Tyrone (David Anthony Smith), despite his promises to sell it to Hogan at a reduced price, and will Josie find love and settle down? And what are the chances that Josie could snag the rich Tyrone, who spends extraordinary amounts of time in bars and in New York, cavorting with the Broadway crowd?

Though Tyrone is based on O’Neill’s older brother, the plot is just a vehicle to explore the human condition. A Moon for the Misbegotten is about longing, lies and self-loathing, guilt and the need for forgiveness. These are characters reluctant to admit to any of the above; only crisis will bring out their human weaknesses.

McMurtry just gets better as he ages. The first act is all his, and he makes the most of it with timing, accent, gestures and carriage. But Kash and Smith catch up in their long, dramatic and difficult later scenes. Walker and Richard Baird also make fine contributions in smaller roles.

Josie and her father play out their destinies on another fabulous Marty Burnett set, with terrific costumes by Jeanne Reith and lighting by Michael Paolini.

O’Neill won four Pulitzer Prizes for Drama and the 1936 Nobel Prize for Literature for his starkly realistic (and some would say depressing) portrayals. Some call him the best American dramatist. Whatever your opinion, A Moon for the Misbegotten is one of his most lyric and accessible works, and North Coast Rep gives us a fine production.

A Moon for the Misbegotten plays through Feb. 11 at North Coast Repertory Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. Select Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m. and select Saturday matinees at 2:00 p.m. For tickets, call (858) 481-1055 or visit: http://northcoastrep.org

“There is a fluidity to the heat in South Carolina. The sun can make you see things that aren’t there.”

So begins Dael Orlandersmith’s poetic, evocative and ultimately devastating Yellowman, directed by Esther Emery and playing through Feb. 11 at Cygnet Theatre.

Yellowman explores some of the elements of the black experience in the ’60s and beyond: dreams and longing, poverty, self-loathing and an internal racism that resulted in a social rift between light-skinned and dark-skinned blacks, as pronounced as that between the races.

This was a society in which black women didn’t make statements as much as ask questions. “The question marks at the end of their statements were from women who knew their place, “ Orlandersmith writes. “These women prayed because there was no love for them on this planet. So they prayed ... for a space, no matter how meager, in heaven.”

Alma (Monique Gaffney) and Eugene (Mark Broadnax) meet as kids of 7 and 9, respectively. They play freely, as kids will, unaware that the corrosive effects of intraracial strife will soon touch their lives and change their futures. (Alma’s skin is medium dark, Eugene’s light).

Alma and her mother, Odelia, share the poverty of sharecropping. Deserted by the one-night stand who fathered Alma, too poor even for inside plumbing, Odelia desperately uses alcohol to forget and directs insults at Alma (“ugly, fat, filthy black bitch”) to prop up her own near-nonexistent self-esteem.

Eugene, middle-class son of a railroad worker, must endure his father Robert’s brutal, jealousy-inspired taunts for the light yellow skin he inherited from his mother’s side. Eugene may talk and dress better than his poor Geechie Gullah-speaking neighbors, but his father’s abuse hurts him just as much as Odelia’s comments sting Alma.

Time goes by; Alma and Eugene fall in love. Alma, bright and unwilling to give up her dreams of a better life, doubles up credits, graduates early and gets a scholarship to Hunter College in New York. Eugene follows, but as surely as none of us can escape the past, both will tragically be drawn back to South Carolina.

Orlandersmith, poet and playwright, gives us a stunning theatrical tour de force needing only simple staging – two chairs, a fence, some light changes – but demanding spectacular acting. Yellowman is a multicharacter script for two actors, each playing a wide range of relatives and friends. It’s all in the voices, timing, carriage and gestures, and aided by Emery’s terrific direction, Gaffney and Broadnax turn in performances as fine as I’ve seen anywhere.

Cygnet gives this fine play (a finalist for the 2002 Pulitzer Prize) the production it deserves. Don’t miss it.

Yellowman plays through Feb. 11 at Cygnet Theatre. Shows Thursday through Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 337-1525 ext. 3 or visit: www.cygnettheatre.com

You will not find a happy ending in South African playwright Ashraf Johaardien’s Happy Endings Are Extra, in its U.S. premiere run through Feb. 11 at Diversionary Theatre.

There’s not much in the way of happy middles, either, as Cape Town resident Gabriel (Claudio Raygoza) tries to juggle relationships with both his fiancée Chantelle (Anahid Sharik) and attractive but underage rent boy Chris (Michael Purvis).

Gabriel is putatively bisexual, but the fact that he and Chantelle have a long relationship that is only occasionally sexual raises a few questions: Is it merely his interest in kinky sex that drives Gabriel to rent boys, or is he in fact gay and unwilling to admit it? Why is Chantelle willing to settle for this relationship, so obviously unsatisfying to both?

It’s difficult to tell, and Johaardien doesn’t stop to explore the possibilities; he is intent on hurtling headlong to the shockingly tragic conclusion of this 70-minute piece.

Raygoza does a fine job of portraying Gabriel’s ambivalence and confusion, as well as the aching need for a man’s touch, or at any rate to touch a man. Sharik does the best one could with a part that makes her seem more like harpy than partner. But she looks marvelous in costume designer Shulamit Nelson’s designs. And Purvis, who gets to shed it all, looks great that way. But he could stand to project a bit better, especially in his final scene.

Johaardien has a poet’s turn of phrase (“Above the city of wonder a cat’s eye moon hangs high, watching secrets”) and a vivid facility for description. Much of Happy Endings consists of expository monologues, normally a risky choice but here written well enough to sustain interest. But this play could stand to be fleshed out a bit more.

I look forward to more work from this promising young (32-year-old) playwright.

Happy Endings Are Extra plays through Feb. 11 at Diversionary Theatre. Shows Thursday at 7:30; Friday and Saturday at 8:00 p.m.; Sunday at 2:00 and 7:00 p.m.; Monday, Feb. 5 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, call (619) 220-0097 or visit www.diversionary.org.