Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O’Neill 10 out of 10

 Desire Under the Elms by Eugene O’Neill

10 out of 10

‘Thank God for small mercies’ – for some days now I have been tracking the National Channel number Three, which has on every evening, without exception, a theater production at eight o’clock and for an annoying time, play after play has been either compromised by acting, directing or both – Caligula by Albert Camus is a case in point - http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/caligula-by-albert-camus-production-of.html - or in a few instances, it was the work itself that did not promise much and delivered even less – The enigma in the will, based on graves by Mihail Sadoveanu is an example in this sense http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-enigma-in-will-based-on-graves-by.html

Desire Under the Elms appears sublime, a performance worthy of a Tony Award in comparison, albeit this is largely due to lowered expectations – once you are witness to a series of exaggerated, preposterous, shouted, barked, howled representations, when you are blessed with acting and directing that approach the normal, restrained, decent, cerebral, subdued renditions you feel you have reached heaven- and we can look forward to this evening’s offering, The Deputy by Rolf Hochhuth, in the program as The Vicar - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deputy

although I have seen this play in 1917 and remembered vaguely the characters and anticipated some of the events - http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/04/note-on-desire-under-elms-by-eugene.html - much of the plot was obscure though and there is a feeling that I am reading too much for the feeble capacity of this brain, which has increasingly the tendency to forget a book written not long ago…well, Desire Under the elms has some traits that may be forgettable and others that we can see shared with other works – the marvelous author, Eugene O’Neill, ‘attempts to adapt elements and themes of Greek tragedy’

The opening scenes remind me of Stumbling Upon Happiness by Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html - in which we find about some popular Myths, which include the idea that if I get tenure, or this man or woman would be elected president I would be blissfully happy and then there is the California or Caribbean island myth – we tend to say that if I were to live in California, this Caribbean island – even Santorini seems to be enough for the undersigned in some of his happiness exercises which is suggested to include Imagine the Best Possible future or a version of that Imagine the Best Possible Self – I would be elated…the truth of this has been tested and it is contradicted by the phenomenon called Hedonic Adaptation – once we get to the west Coast or that idyllic island, we adapt to the palm trees, the splendid weather – which occasionally includes hurricanes, or severe draughts that had affected Californians to the point where in various places baths were forbidden, grass was dried and painted green for use of precious water was limited – and then start to see the shortcomings, major traffic jams, on the islands, huge bills for electricity and many other things, power cuts and thus the anticipated paradise becomes just another location…

Simeon and Peter talk just about this California Dreaming, though in their case it could well work, for it is not just a question of lamenting about the place where they are and anticipating just a major difference made by weather, or the simple move, their travelling to the West coast looks like a transformation of their life, because they had lived in what looks like servitude, obeying their cruel and overbearing father, Ephraim Cabot, now seventy five, a man with an obsession for property, selfish to the point where he would say to his third wife, Abbie Putnam, that when he dies, he wants to still…keep his property, which will still be his if he gives it to the one he thinks of as his son, who, having his own blood will perpetuate this idea that he will own everything even when he will be six feet under…

Simeon and Peter are the sons from the first marriage of Ephraim Cabot and they mock, Eben, probably we could consider him the main character, the hero of this play, who is twenty five and offers to pay for the share of the departing step brothers, who treat him with contempt, move on to speak of his habit of seeing Minnie, apparently a woman that has had sex with all, first with Simeon they say, then with Peter, only to remember that there is Ephraim, and he was the first…Eben, who is pure, innocent, moral and vulnerable when compared with his step brothers and indeed, the other few personages, takes the side of Minnie.

He would do so again, in a quarrel with Abbie Putnam, accusing the latter of being a liar and a cheat, worse than the whore, for that one is open and honest about her business, while Abbie has deceived him, trapping the young man – her step son at that point – into a vicious scheme through which she will have gained the property she is so obsessed with – at least this is the feeling, nay, certitude he has after confronting his old, but still vicious, selfish, property obsessed father, who boasts about the fact that he had come fifty years before and they all laughed when he got this land with rocks and they kept saying that wheat does not come from rocks and look at what he has made out of this farm…His Farm!

All three sons are wondering where the old man has disappeared, for he had left two months ago and they have no news of him since – maybe he died somewhere they wonder – but none of them seems to consider his thereabouts with affection, on the contrary, as the father himself says, they hate him – Eben is sure that Ephraim is the one who killed his mother, overworking and treating her with such monstrous indifference and tyrannical demands that the exhausted woman died as a consequence – now he is sure the farm is his, but one of the step brothers is amused – ‘tell him about that and I bet he will laugh for the first time in his life’

Ephraim Cabot arrives with a major surprise – albeit if you know someone capable of anything, then nothing he does should surprise you – a woman of thirty five comes with him, Abbie Putnam, and she is the wife that exchanged vows with such an old man in order to get the house – however, when she says my house, he corrects her – ‘ha, it is my house, my room…at best, our room’ – in conversation with her step son, Eben, Abbie tries to reason and threaten him at the same time, explaining that she understands, but they are similar in that they have suffered, she has had a terrible life and now she wants this to be her house, her kitchen…

It will all get complicated, for is she first tries to accuse Eben unfairly in front of his father, for an attempted rape or abuse he has not had in mind – he just said to her repeatedly go to the devil, at least in translation, the production we had last night on television was in the local language – then she loves the younger man to the point where she loses it all, maybe…