Self is extremely curious as to why the Robert Falls production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” closed early on Broadway ??!!
Self loved the play when she saw it at the Goodman! It was definitely the highlight of self’s first trip to Chicago!
So, self was very happy to see an article about Eugene O’Neill in The New Yorker of 11 May 2009. And she’s been wondering how to blog about it ever since.
Let’s see: “Desire Under the Elms” brought the original cast – Pablo Schreiber, Carla Gugino and Brian Dennehy – to Broadway. Here’s what Hilton Als has to say about it:
” . . . the most powerful character in the beginning of “Desire Under the Elms” is the ultimate unattainable woman: a dead mother.”
Wow! That is just so funny.
The young hero of the play, Eben, is now “the only woman in the house; he wears his mother’s apron to cook for his brothers and keeps her parlor intact with a Norman Bates-like fetishism.”
Als has a really great way of re-creating dramatic mood. Here’s how he describes the play’s opening:
” … Falls opens the production in silence. We see the two older brothers carting stones across the murky landscape. Then we watch as Peter removes the entrails of a pig – the landscape can yield only blood, which is one reason that the brothers soon head for California.”
and
“We watch the daily life of the three characters – Eben, Abbie, and Ephraim – develop to the strains of Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet.”
Als describes the play’s two young leads (Gugino and Schreiber) thus:
“Separately, they have spun poetry in the most literal-minded of mediums: television.”
He has good things to say about both, but it’s his analysis of the female character that really wows self:
“While watching Gugino’s pretty, deceitful, lonely heroine bringing down the house she so longed for, I thought of the imperious and beautiful Carlotta Monterey, O’Neill’s last wife … Monterey, a former actress, knew how to love and torture and deceive him just enough to keep him writing about the same woman over and over again.”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.
mnemosynewrites said,
July 2, 2009 at 9:22 pm
Wow! Evil, I know, but would love to be that relentlessly haunting- where do I sign up for lessons? And kudos to Mr. Als for an unforgettable description.
You’re so versatile, Self.
From Hogwarts wizardry to an entirely different kind of enchantment in a span of hours, and without missing a beat.
This would be why I’m glued to your blog 24/7.
anthropologist said,
July 2, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Ha, ha, ha — first of all, Filipinas don’t need any lessons in how to be haunting! You know, we are kind of effortlessly so, aren’t we
Aaack, aaack, I like any kind of drama — cinematical or theatrical. You could say it’s my outlet.