Desire Under the Elms - Roundabout Theatre Company
Written by Eugene O'Neill
Directed by Terry Schreiber
Roundabout Theatre Company/Stage One
Role: Eben
March 20th through June 3rd, 1984
Information from The Unofficial Lenny Von Dohlen Fanpage
Roundabout Theater Company Inc.
Gene Feist, Producer Director
Todd Haimes, Managing Director
Lee Kathy
Richardson Whitton Baker
in
Eugene O'Neill's
Desire Under The Elms
also starring
Lenny Von Dohlen
with
Patrick Meyers Tom Spiller
Directed by
Terry Schreiber
Set Design by Costume Design by
Michael Sharp Eloise Lunde
Lighting Design by Musical Direction by
Robert F. Strohmeier Philip Campanella
Production Stage Manager
Kathy J. Faul
CAST
Eben Cabot..........................................................................Lenny Von Dohlen
Simeon Cabot.......................................................................Tom Spiller
Peter Cabot..........................................................................Patrick Meyers
Ephraim Cabot....................................................................Lee Richardson
Abbie Putnam Cabot..................................................Kathy Whitton Baker
The Fiddler............................................................................Patrick Meyers
Sheriff.....................................................................................Tom Spiller
Deputy Sheriff.......................................................................Patrick Meyers
ACT II
Late Spring, the following year
There will be one Ten-Minute intermission
Mr. Von Dohlen's biography from my April Playbill:
Lenny Von Dohlen (Eben) has just returned from starring in the MGM-UA film Electric Dreams, to be released this summer. He can currently be seen as Robert, the bandleader, in Tender Mercies with Robert Duvall. In New York last year he created the role of Tom in Larry Ketron's Asian Shade at the WPA, and played Betty/Gerry in Cloud 9 for 7 months at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. His regional credits include Hal in Loot at the Oregon Contemporary Theatre and Richard in Gus Kaikkonen's The Chinese Viewing Pavilion at the Boarshead: Michigan Public Theatre. He made his television debut as Cal in NBC's Emmy Award-winning "Kent State," and has also appeared as Paulie in NBC's "Sessions" and on PBS in "Mother May I?" and "How To Be a Perfect Person in Just Three Days."
I have seen one Playbill from March, 1984 and own another from April of the same year. According to a newspaper article included in this post, Mr. Von Dohlen, Kathy Whitton Baker, and Lee Richardson left the production by May 20th, before its official opening. I wish I knew what transpired.
An plot synopsis from Sparknotes,
The play takes place at a farmhouse in New England in 1850. The owner of the farm is Ephraim Cabot. He has three sons: Simeon, Peter, and Eben. Simeon and Peter are his older sons from his first marriage, and Eben is the youngest from his second marriage. At the play's opening, the sons live alone on the farm, and Cabot has been gone for two months without any word. Simeon and Peter work the farm, and Eben takes care of the house. Simeon and Peter talk about going to California for the Gold Rush. They don't get along well with Eben, and none of the sons get along with their father. Eben thinks the farm should belong to him since it was his mother's, and he blames his father for his mother's death. Eben hears in town that his father has married again. He tells his brothers and convinces them to sign their share of the farm over to him in exchange for the money he's found hidden under the kitchen floor. They eventually agree and prepare to leave for California. As they are going, Cabot arrives with his new wife, Abbie. Simeon and Peter are happy to say goodbye to their father and make fun of him for being married again. Abbie tries to befriend Eben, but he's resentful of her because he believes her presence will rob him of the farm. There is tension and attraction between them.
Two months after Abbie’s arrival, she and Eben vacillate between quarreling and lusting after each other. Cabot loves Abbie and does not suspect that anything is amiss. Abbie convinces Cabot that she will bear him a son, and Cabot agrees to give her anything she wants if she does. Abbie and Eben meet in the parlor while Cabot is sleeping in the barn. They both claim to feel the presence of Eben’s mother, and Abbie convinces him that his mother would be happy for them to be together. They profess their love for each other and spend the night in the parlor.
The following Spring, there is a gathering at the farmhouse to celebrate the birth of Abbie's baby. Cabot is joyful and encourages people to drink and dance. The townspeople gossip behind Cabot's back about Eben and Abbie's relationship. Eben and Abbie do not join the party, and Eben is upset that they can't be open about the baby being his. Later in the evening, Eben and Cabot meet each other outside. They argue, and Cabot tells Eben that Abbie wants a baby so she can take the farm from Eben. The argument devolves into a fight, and Cabot begins to choke Eben. Abbie comes out and breaks them up. She tries to comfort Eben, but he is cold to her. Cabot goes back inside, laughing about the encounter. Eben and Abbie argue; he accuses her of lying and wanting to steal from him. He declares that he'll leave and go to California. Abbie cries and begs him not to, saying she'll do anything to prove she loves him.
The next morning, Eben is in the kitchen, ready to leave. Abbie comes down and tells him she's killed their baby. Eben is shocked and angry and Abbie begins to cry when she realizes her mistake. She tries to make amends, but Eben leaves to tell the sheriff. Cabot wakes up and she begins speaking wildly, telling him the baby was Eben's. Cabot becomes dazed and emotional. He is resigned after learning Eben has gone to the sheriff and starts to walk toward the barn.
Eben returns as Cabot is leaving the house. Cabot shoves him and tells him to leave the farm, then continues to the barn. Eben goes inside to Abbie. He’s told the sheriff what she did but is remorseful and tells her he loves her. They kiss and embrace, then argue about Eben turning himself in as well. Cabot comes back from the barn and talks wildly about leaving the farm and going to California. He talks about letting the cows run wild and burning the house and the fields so that no one else can use what is his. He lifts the floorboards to retrieve the money but finds that it's gone. He realizes Eben has taken it, and Eben explains he gave it to Simeon and Peter. The sheriff arrives with two men, and Eben quickly tells him that he committed the crime with Abbie. Cabot is distraught that his chance to leave the farm has been taken from him, He leaves Abbie and Eben and goes back to the barn. Abbie and Eben leave the house together, followed by the sheriff and his men.
A review from the Eugene O'Neill Newsletter,
4. DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS, directed by Terry Schreiber. Roundabout Theatre Company (Stage One), New York City, March 20 - June 3, 1984.
The Roundabout Theatre Company, one of Manhattan's most reliable resuscitators of dramatic classics, has again earned the gratitude of O'Neillians by mounting, a season after its well-received Ah, Wilderness!, a creditable production of Desire Under the Elms. Since I attended an early preview, when the actors were still exploring and growing into their roles, this is more a report than an official review. (The critics' opening was subsequently postponed, for unspecified "technical" reasons, and I don't know if it ever occurred, since no review has surfaced in the Times, which is a shame.) While the production said nothing new about life in O'Neill's New Englandized Troezen, the text was faithfully served; and while there were problems--one major, one minor--that only substantial directorial changes could remedy, the three leads seemed right for their parts, and the set's major element, a revolving farmhouse, was spectacularly effective.
Thanks to scenic designer Michael Sharp, the high, wide Roundabout stage was handsomely evocative of mid-nineteenth century New England. Sharp's set showed, as the current Broadway Moon did not, that the real and the unreal can be blended harmoniously. There was real dirt, for instance, real-looking stones, and a gate that could well have been salvaged from an abandoned farmyard. Less real were the perennially troublesome elms, which were here "suggested" by shadowy projections on the Cabot homestead and, along with low, fleecy clouds, on the rear cyclorama. But the glory of the set--of the production, in fact--was the two-story farmhouse that dominated the front of the stage at the audience's left. Here too, real and unreal were wedded--not just because it twirled, but because the exterior was little more than a skeletal suggestion (plain horizontal boards, clearly new, with gaps between them and holes where the doors and windows would be), while the rooms within had the cluttered, lived-in look of reality. (It is suggestive of Sharp's success that no one thought till long after the show was over that this was not a house one would want to winter in! Awe at the achievement abetted the suspension of disbelief.)
Only the exterior was visible at the start and during outdoor scenes. For most of the indoor episodes, we saw--as in the accompanying photograph--the first-floor kitchen, a staircase at its rear, and the two bedrooms above. Later, an additional turn revealed the parlor, where subdued music by Philip Campanella and blue evening light shining through the gaps in the outside wall provided just the right atmosphere for Eben and Abbie's moment of rapprochement. (Doubly right in terms of the light, which cast prophetic prison-like bars that also subtly qualified the scene's aura of liberation from the pressure of the past. The spirit of Eben's mother was clearly present; and when the blue light gave way to dawn, we felt that her ghost could, as Eben says, "rest now an' sleep content." (Robert Strohmeier's lighting design was similarly fine through-out the performance, and the parlor scene was the best I've witnessed.)
The principals worked well together, though when I attended, they seemed to lack the full assurance that only time can provide. Still, this made for an effective ensemble performance, no one trying to outshine or overshadow the others. Lee Richardson, as Ephraim, made up in sonorous voice for what he lacked in towering stature. Bearded, black-clad and every inch the old-school patriarch, he revealed the pathetic vulnerability behind Ephraim's blustery facade, and his "Purty good--fur yew!" when Eben opts to share Abbie's fate, caught perfectly the "grudging admiration" with which O'Neill says it is delivered--a touching moment of paternal benediction that many Ephraims overlook, and a moving coda to the violent father-son altercations that preceded it. Kathy Whitton Baker was smaller and younger than the usual Abbie, and her arsenal of emotions was inadequate for the most passionate moments--before the murder and at the end (a nice surface reading of the lines, with insufficient feeling behind them)--but she caught well the transitions from hard schemer to provocative seductress to sincere lover, and her pleas for Eben's love after the murder (in the parlor, in this production) were soulfully delivered and earned a pity that evaporated when she walked off at play's end more mechanically resigned than exultant. Lenny Von Dohlen, blessed with exactly the "defiant dark eyes" that the playwright prescribes, earned the most sympathy of all, despite the petulance and surly cynicism of his early scenes with his brothers, because his later moments of pain, anguish, love and self-abnegation seemed the most real. I hope to see him try others of O'Neill's sensitive protagonists; he is a performer to watch.
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THE CABOTS IN THEIR ROUNDABOUT HOME |
Of the production's two problems, the major one arose from director Terry Schreiber's decision, doubtless necessitated by the small cast of five, to play the central party scene behind the exterior of the house, and to suggest it by fiddle music, the sounds of clapping and laughter, and the periodic appearance of Ephraim and others, whirling out from behind the house and then reeling back in again. This cut the action to almost nothing, moved it far from the audience, left the stage virtually empty, robbed the play of an important visual and tonal contrast, and drained all the force and accompanying irony from the little that remained of Ephraim's grotesque dance of dionysian abandon. The minor problem involved Eben's surly siblings. Tom Spiller and Patrick Meyers were appropriately unlikable as Simeon and Peter, but they seemed determined to strip their characters of all the marvelous comedy with which O'Neill had invested them, and un
fortunately they succeeded. This can't have been the result of bad casting; it must have been the decision of the director, and, like the cutting of most of the party scene, it removed much of the play's leavening revelry and left it tonally monochromatic.
Fortunately Schreiber provided much physical business to make up for what he had removed: falls, fights (at one point Ephraim comes close to strangling Eben), and a dance of liberation for Simeon and Peter around a bewildered Ephraim that allows the sons the kind of manic grotesquerie that is later denied their father! All in all, errors notwithstanding, Schreiber provided audiences with a clear picture of the troubles in the family Cabot, and Sharp contributed a farmhouse that will long continue revolving in the viewer's memory.
--Frederick C. Wilkins
Photos from the New York Public Library Digital Collection.
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