It may be nearly a hundred years since Desire Under the Elms was written, but the stage still brims with the barely-repressed desire promised by the title of Eugene O’Neill’s controversial 1924 play. Rarely performed, the play goes beyond its deceptively simple setting and plot – a New England farm and a family dispute over its rightful ownership – to gain a scope that is evocative of Greek tragedy and even shows influences of Freudian thought. The plot may not be particularly surprising, but like the best Greek tragedies that is not where its strength is supposed to lie: the tension comes from the horrible, utterly unstoppable nature of the ending we can all see coming.

Morgan Watkins has his work cut out for him in the difficult central role of Eben, a young man still living and working on his parents’ farm, but entirely his mother’s son. She is dead long before the play’s opening scene, but her ghost hangs over the entire thing, fuelling Eben’s difficult relationship with his father Ephraim (Finbar Lynch, a little young-looking for the 76-year-old Ephraim, but marvellous), as their unhappy marriage came out of a legal dispute regarding to whom, exactly, the farm legally belonged. Eben believes it is his by right, from his mother, so when his father returns from town with a straightforward, rather glamorous thirty-something wife (Denise Gough) as a follow-up to Eben’s late mother, he tries his very best to set himself against her – but she has other plans for him.

It is very definitely Gough’s show: as Abbie, Ephraim’s far younger wife, she gives coherence to a character that seems to sometimes lack it in the script itself. There is a large shift in time during the interval, during which Abbie’s character seems to change greatly while off stage, but Gough copes well. At times, Abbie’s actions may stretch credibility, but we never fail to believe in her, thanks to a bravura performance and excellent direction from the ever-reliable Sean Holmes, the Lyric’s artistic director. It is also worth mentioning the extent to which Holmes uses music throughout the production, with Jason Baughan as ‘The Musician’ taking to the stage with his guitar during scene changes. The music gives greater atmosphere and power to what has come before or is to follow, as well as rooting the play firmly in its setting and period. Personally, I couldn’t be happier about the apparent craze for live music in so many theatre productions I’ve seen over the last few years; it really adds something.

For all its strengths, though, Holmes’s revival of Desire Under the Elms is an easy production to like but a difficult one to love. Ian MacNeil’s set is frankly a little bizarre, with boxes of rooms being wheeled on and off between every scene, being spun full circle on their wheels like gigantic ballerinas as they slowly approach their position. It is very stylised looking, but I found it hard to tell if there was any substance behind. Although rather daring, I ultimately just found it distracting. Also, as I mentioned before, Eben seems an incredibly difficult character to get a handle on, and though Watkins’s efforts were certainly valiant and he is clearly a talented actor, it is not quite a strong enough central performance to lift this difficult and unusual play out of the realm of the good and into the remarkable.

Perhaps it was the feeling of removal created by the unreality of the set or perhaps it was simply the huge change in mood and pace between the first and second halves; whatever it was, I couldn’t help but leave the venue feeling impressed and yet curiously unmoved.

Desire Under the Elms is running at the Lyric Hammersmith until November 10^th. For more information and tickets, see the Lyric Hammersmith website. Photo by Keith Pattison.

Since graduating from RADA three years ago, Morgan Watkins hasn’t exactly opted for light relief when it comes to the plays he has performed in. From Deborah Warner’s production of Mother Courage and Her Children at the National in 2009, to Sean Holmes’s revival of Saved at the Lyric Hammersmith last October, tragic themes have become his daily bread. As he returns to the Lyric to play Eben Cabot in Desire under the Elms – arguably his most challenging theatrical role to date – the themes of Eugene O’Neill’s classic play are no less morose. Like Saved, it even features its share of infanticide.

So what is it about the theatrical dark that keeps drawing the young actor in? “I don’t think it’s particularly a preference I have,” Watkins explains. “It’s just something I seem to end up doing – maybe because I’m not afraid of it. But I do like plays and films that explore the darker issues in life: the more perverse and stranger things. What O’Neill’s done in the play is he’s given these quite simple people in rural America in 1850 this incredibly tragic set of circumstances and let it burn. It’s not a play about society as such, it’s a play about the human psyche. I thought it was fantastic, an amazing piece of writing, and Eben was a fascinating character to explore. He’s got a really volatile way of thinking about things and he can literally flip in a space of five seconds from one opinion to the opposite. He is definitely a very troubled, trapped man.”

In O’Neill’s play, which resituates Greek tragedy in the rural New England of the late nineteenth century, Eben is the youngest son of Ephraim Cabot, a brutal and exacting man who has for years repressed his family. “Eben was 15 when his mother died,” Watkins tells me. “After she died, he had to take over the mother’s role in the house and he began to realise what she’d been through. Eben is a thinker, a sensitive soul. He couldn’t believe the way in which they’d all stood by and let his father slave her to death. So he takes it upon himself to avenge his mother’s death in some way – and he’s kind of working that out as the play starts.” It’s at this point that Eben’s elderly father [Finbar Lynch] suddenly arrives home with a new wife and, as Watkins juicily puts it, “everything goes tits up”.

“It’s a complete shock because he’s 75-years-old: it’s the last thing that they expected”. Less expected still, however, is the adulterous relationship which develops between Eben and his father’s bride, Abbie [Denise Gough]. “I think at first there’s a huge mutual attraction between them: she’s physically very attractive to him, and vice versa. And Eben hasn’t got much experience of women: even though he’s 25, he’s quite a repressed character. He can’t just go to a nightclub and see loads of girls in the way that I might be able to today. But I do think Abbie is the driving force at first.”

Strongly attracted to Eben, Abbie tries to seduce her stepson, but is initially refused. He resists Abbie “because she is counter-intuitive to what he wants to achieve, which is to regain his mother’s farm and put his mother’s spirit to rest.” However, Eben’s reluctance is short-lived. “Later in the play you see that change, and they completely connect at one point.”

Creating a convincing onstage relationship was an intense but oddly uncomplicated process for Watkins and his co-star Denise Gough. “Everyone who has watched the runs has said how believable it is – how believable the feelings are between us. But it’s just that we’ve been committing to the scenes and discussing and working on them. We haven’t done any exercises to get close to each other or anything. I think we’re both quite honest actors, me and Denise. And I think when you both just play the scenes and believe in the scenes and the situation, it just happens.”

But with such extremes on stage – adultery, infanticide and these overpowering echoes of Greek tragedy – how do the performers manage to preserve the realism? “It’s actually quite tough because the themes are so huge. Everything is so dramatic, there’s so much emotion and the stakes are so high. You’ve just got to tell the story at the same time and in fact, in life, in the most tragic circumstances, we don’t always behave epically. There’s a lot of logic and problem-solving as opposed to just dwelling on problems. So I personally try to pick it apart and play the scenes for what they are. Even if the stakes are really high and there’s something really dramatic going on, you’ve got to play it with accuracy and not overdo it. That’s the key. It’s just imagination and commitment, acting, and I think if you put yourself in that situation and believe what is happening then it organically will be what it should be.”

This straightforward commitment to the text is also characteristic of Sean Holmes’s style as a director, and is why Watkins so enjoys working with him. “He’s just very simple, Sean, he’s straight to the point. Some people in theatre and in acting think that we’re doing some sort of sacred, epic thing. And in some ways when it’s great it is kind of like that. But Sean is not the type of guy to think that at all – he just gets in the room and gets on with it. He treats everyone with equal respect, as if you’re just normal. That’s what I find very appealing about working with him, and I find it easy to listen to and respect everything he says. He just picks the play apart: we have a read and we start attacking the text and discussing it.”

With an appreciation for this fairly no-nonsense approach to the job, perhaps it’s no wonder that Watkins is gradually making his mark on the silver and small screen as well as the stage. As he treads the boards at the Lyric, his face will also be appearing on TVs across the country as a regular on the second series of the BBC’s iconic drama, The Hour. So as he becomes more of a household name, I asked him whether he still plans to keep his feet firmly on the stage: “I’m up for doing as much as I can of anything,” he says, “as long as it’s good writing and a good character and good drama for people to watch and enjoy. I do love theatre: I love rehearsing every day, the sort of hands-on side to theatre and the fact that it’s constant. But I also love the medium of film and television – it’s wonderful in its own right. I just want to do great drama really, wherever that is: as long as it’s bloody good.”

Desire under the Elms previews at the Lyric Hammersmith on Wednesday 3 October and plays until Saturday 10 November 2012. For tickets and more information, visit www.lyric.co.uk.

Image credit: Morgan Watkins as Eben Cabot and Denise Gough as Abbie Putnam by Keith Pattison

In a time of job losses and economic uncertainly, it is easy to see how The Hairy Ape, a play that is basically a rant against the ruling classes, has resurfaced. Eugene O’Neill is perhaps one of the few playwrights of the early twentieth century who experienced ‘how the other half live’ from both perspectives. Having started his adult life in a state of self-induced destitution, by the age of 26 he was studying at Harvard. This life of extremes is very apparent in his play, exploring the difficulties of class and how we respond to our human need to belong. Through the characters of Yank, a working class man employed as a ship’s fireman, and Mildred, the spoilt daughter of the ship’s owner who is out to help the poor, we see how they are both victimised by social class.

The Southwark Playhouse, almost hidden under the London Bridge train lines, could not have been a better choice of theatre for a play such as The Hairy Ape. The now converted workshop, with its exposed brickwork and rather dank feel, lends itself well to the play, set in New York during the early 1920s. Much credit must go to Richard Howell (lighting) and Jean Chan (set and costume) for creating a space that was bold and supple, flowing from below deck to the breezy promenade and demanding your attention while doing so.

The Hairy Ape is very much a play of contrasts: rich/poor, light/dark, animal/human. Throughout the play, Director Kate Budgen is not shy of exploring these in a multitude of ways. The darkly lit, claustrophobic scenes of the ship’s under-belly stand in stark contrast to the bright, well-lit, airy world that Mildred inhabits. The animalistic movements of the men who power the ship come to a terrific climax in a section of highly-stylised choreography that makes the appearance of the white-clad Mildred below deck seem almost ethereal.

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling throughout the play that it was concentrating too much on hammering home the theme of class difference than letting the language of the play and the characters themselves talk to the audience. Using dummy heads on sticks to represent how humans have evolved to become things that are artificial seemed a little gimmicky in its attempts to make us think about matters of class. This almost Brechtian approach drew attention away from some very striking performances. Bill Ward’s Yank was brilliant, portraying a physically impressive man whose sudden struggle with class awareness turns him into what Mildred sees him as, an ape. However, against this, Emma King’s Mildred was too weak and child-like; though O’Neill wants us to see them both as victims of their class we do not feel any sympathy towards her whatsoever.

It is a play with a lot of promise that has not quite achieved what it set out to do. While visually it was very striking – an attack on the senses – there was something lacking. Something that is just waiting to be let out of what could be a great play.

The Hairy Ape is playing at Southwark Playhouse until 9 June. For more information and tickets, see the Southwark Playhouse website. Photography by Jane Hobson.

Whilst waiting for the delayed writer and director of 6 Actors in Search of a Director, I meet some of the bustling cast. Despite being asked if I was an Assistant Stage Manager by one actor, the friendly ensemble happily tell me about their forthcoming show. Silk and One Night actor Neil Stuke describes the play (ironically, in retrospect, due to Berkoff’s initial, unintended absence) as “actors waiting in a room for a director. It’s tense.”

Alongside Stuke’s pre-rehearsal storytelling of his early morning trip to Daybreak, I meet one of the show’s producers, Steven Levy, who explains the history of Charing Cross Theatre in between painting the avocado-coloured walls of the theatre’s bar. “It was derelict. There was masking tape covering holes in the floor; nearly everyone in theatre had given up on it. When the opportunity came to buy it last year, we jumped on it, seeing its potential. It used to only be programmed for 20% of the time.”

The classically decorated theatre, complete with chandeliers, contrasts starkly with its previous state. The theatre is both a producing and presenting venue. Levy tells me, “We have recently programmed the theatre for the next year. I can’t tell you who we have yet, as not all of them have confirmed. There are set to be some interesting choices, which should cause a stir. But we are announcing our line up to the press in the next few weeks.”

It’s clearly an exciting time for the theatre, not least as Steven Berkoff arrives. Speaking frankly, he explains how, despite being marketed as a comedy, 6 Actors in Search of a Director is “more a slice of life which has comedic elements to it. It is about the laughter of the ridiculousness of the situation.” One can see how this is possible as the show focuses on actors playing actors, who are anxiously waiting in a room for their director to return. Berkoff elaborates on the play by describing how “they are trapped in a situation, waiting, waiting, always waiting. It is an actor’s raison d’etre; all he has to do is entertain himself, to chat, have idle gossip, give funny opinions. It is abrasive, like a pack of dogs in a pen who are hunting. It is about being functional. I was really interested in this as it doesn’t really apply to anyone else, for example electricians go to work and sort out wires, a plumber lays pipelines down.”

Although the play is inspired by the 50 films that Berkoff has featured in, his reasoning behind the play suggests a wider critical comment on film and stage acting. “An actor’s life on film has no comparison to actors on the stage. Actors love film, the locations of filming. But with film actors, it gradually erodes their talent away. Actors on stage use their voice, stamina and courage. It is a completely different skill, of honesty and truthfulness; it is a talent to be persuasive.”

He continues with unabashed honesty: “As much as I adore films, and it is fun, at the end of the day, film actors are second division. A film actor can come in and do nothing. It undermines his confidence, it diminishes his skills. They don’t have the courage to be stage actors. I’ve worked on films with lead actors who don’t bother to stage act anymore. Some have tried and failed, but at least they have tried.” Indeed, Berkoff cannot cite a specific scene or film, which led him to decide to write the play, only that “he had felt it coming for some years”.

The actors are brimming with praise for the writer and director, with The King’s Speech actor Paul Trussell carefully clutching his aged highlighted copy of Berkoff’s play West to be signed by him. Speaking as a director, Berkoff states: “we don’t have an artistic process. The actors learn their lines, I can shape the play with movement and choreography. It is about moving on the impulse of the text and communicating with the actors.”

The motivation behind his writing “is a passionate desire to communicate the wonders of the world and life as well its crimes and abuses. It is about what the writer feels and an overwhelming passion to set things down as they are too valuable to be lost. I want to say things to many people, it has to be something which I am moved, stimulated and excited by.” Berkoff reveals he “juxtaposes images, which are distinctly against each other.  I like to try and be unusual, and find an inventive way of presenting ideas. In my opinion, verse is more inventive than prose. I’ve used a lot of poetry in plays. I like to put verse into drama.”

Berkoff sees the art form as a natural habit, “like eating, drinking and sleeping”. His high standards mean that many contemporary plays don’t meet his approval. “I have walked out of plays after the first act because I don’t think that they do this.” But he does concede an appreciation of Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams’s writing. As for Berkoff’s future, he simply wants to “keep on working”. Hoping that 6 Actors in Search of a Director transfers to the West End, he’s also keen to “put on a Eugene O’Neill play and Methuen is publishing some of my plays shortly.” Great news for theatergoers that Berkoff’s theatrical habits are as alive as ever.

6 Actors in Search of a Director plays at the newly renovated Charing Cross Theatre until 23 June. For tickets and more information, visit the theatre’s website. With a new menu set to launch soon, too, the theatre is a great place to visit (as I am well informed by the actors that the food is delicious).

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