An elderly Irish relative of my wife's once paid her a great compliment: "You're a pretty good conversationalist," he said, "for an American." Yes, the Irish do know how to talk, and so does the Irish diaspora -- witness the plays of Eugene O'Neill (1888-1953).

In "A Moon for the Misbegotten," one of O'Neill's half-dozen masterpieces, three Irish-Americans talk a great deal: pig farmer Phil Hogan, his raw-boned daughter Josie and their landlord, Jim Tyrone. Jim is closely based on O'Neill's older brother, Jamie, as will be clear to all who know his greater play about the Tyrones, "Long Day's Journey into Night."

The Public first staged "Moon" in 1992 and "Long Day's Journey" in 1997. Now it revisits "Moon" with director Pamela Berlin, the only connection being the reappearance of Tom Atkins, who first played Jim and now plays Phil.

O'Neill's text has been trimmed, coming in (at the preview I saw) at two hours and forty minutes, including intermission. That isn't long for a serious play, but it feels long. It should. The only plot is the stripping bare of defenses and revelation of character, but that has to proceed slowly for the essential poignancy to develop.

In this moonlit dance of misdirection, all three central characters are better than they will admit, so they hide behind self-created caricatures.

Phil portrays himself as a cantankerous skinflint who battles family, friend or foe. He revels in exaggerating his primitiveness, but soon enough we see his genuine affection for Jim and his deep, surprisingly insightful love of Josie.

Jim's masquerade is as the Broadway swell, bon vivant, boozer, seducer of willing chorus girls and cynic. But on this night he comes to Josie for the unsophisticated innocence beneath her bluff.

The center of the play is Josie, whose disguise is the most extreme. Her defense of her sensitivity against a brutal world is to pretend to coarseness. But we catch glimpses of the unhappy soul within this gaudy construct in the very first scene, when she befriends her sanctimonious young brother, Mike (a neat cameo by Jason McCune). Her self-caricature is obvious in how she slanders herself to Jim to disguise her hopeless love.

Then she realizes Jim loves her, and the play turns tragic when she discovers he's too far gone in dissipation and remorse to be reborn in her love. Her destiny is earth-mother and confessor. All she can offer is one magical, moon-bathed night of redemption.

Slow the play may be, but there are times when Josie could take it even slower, so we can fully feel her sacrifice. Still, it's a lot for a woman to absorb in a brief night of moonshine. On the whole, Beth Wittig navigates this impossible role with heart and skill. Her youth and good looks make her an unconventional Josie, but they intensify the tragedy. Her greatest strengths are raw integrity and glimpses of hurt as she channels her love into a Pieta-like climax, a virgin cradling a dying man.

Atkins' Phil robustly embraces the comedy, as in his routing of the rich man next door (a properly bewildered Daniel Krell), but it's his crusty emotion at the end that earns our gratitude.

The most surprising performance is Victor Slezak's Jim. Although cannily soft-spoken and underplaying, he still registers with force, leaving himself plenty of room to show Jim's drunken self-hatred and pasty-faced living death.

Allen Moyer designed a realistic set rich in detail and bedecked with atmospheric sound by Zach Moore and lights by Frances Aronson, who paints with silvery moonshine and gorgeous sunrise.

The text is peppered with quotations, from popular poetry and songs to Keats and Shakespeare. One quote comes from "Othello," another tragedy of a man who can't believe in the pure love he's offered. Here, amid all the defensive taunts and dares, even a simple kiss is a complex negotiation between need and bravado.

A helpful program essay by dramaturg Heather Helinsky notes that Jim's repressed guilt over the death of his mother echoes O'Neill's own experience. What a gift that he ultimately stills the flood of talk and, in a passage of sad silence, gives these two soiled people a momentary shimmer of transcendence.