“They’s no peace in houses,” says Ephraim Cabot, the rough-hewn, hard-eyed religious patriarch at the center of Eugene O’Neill’s 1924 play “Desire Under the Elms.” “They’s no rest livin’ with folks.”
Set in 1850, “Desire” is a story of religion, forbidden love and tragic family relations based loosely on the Greek myth of Phaedra. The play, rooted in American soil, burns with religion and sexuality, says director Javen Tanner.
“It’s really, yet again, a play in which O’Neill seems to be working out his own relations with his demons and the family ghosts that haunt him,” says Bob Nelson, 70, who plays Cabot.