Review: Mourning Becomes Electra

Eugene O'Neill's four-and-a-half hour drama reimagines the epic family struggle of Aeschylus's Oresteia from a 20th-century, post-Freudian perspective.

The American Civil War provides only a token backdrop - O'Neill's take on the themes of lust and revenge lie in the internal forces of sexual conflict within the family rather than any historical or social context.

Bob Crowley's rich, ingenious back-lit design certainly reflects that, combining an epic sense of scale and emphasising the brooding presence of the house, while allowing the background to fade away into abstraction. It's a flawed play with some lousy dialogue, and Howard Davies's highly watchable production initially struggles to balance its unwieldy melodrama with the somewhat awkwardly imposed natural setting.

There are many compensations however, and Davies gives his actors plenty of room to breathe. Helen Mirren is excellent as the scabrous Christine, while Eve Best's Vinnie just grows and grows, appearing first as a brittle, petulant child before slowly transforming into a woman consumed by a sexual jealousy and desire she barely dares acknowledge.

Self-knowledge is the private burden these characters carry with them, and for all the unavoidable sense of saga, O'Neill finds a powerful theatre in the pathology of transgressive desire that is their fate.

Mourning Becomes Electra