E-Mail This Article to a Friend Rekindling Desire János Szász and the ART take on Eugene O’Neill BY IRIS FANGER

When Desire Under the Elms, Eugene O’Neill’s 1924 family tragedy set in rural New England, launched its national tour after almost a year’s run in New York, it was banned in Boston because of its themes of adultery, incest, and infanticide. But given the contents of the daily news, not to mention what’s on television, the play now seems less shocking than reflective of the human condition.

A rare revival opens next week at the American Repertory Theatre mounted by Hungarian stage and film director János Szász. According to ART artistic director Robert Woodruff, who picked both the play and Szász to stage it, "A European master can take it on without the cultural baggage. What János brings so amazingly to the actors is the emotional thickness he creates in the room, beyond what we expect. He avoids clichés; the archetypes are split open when he works."

It’s no wonder that neither Woodruff nor Szász has ever seen a production of Desire — since O’Neill’s death in 1953 and the posthumous release of Long Day’s Journey into Night, the late plays about the dramatist’s family have taken precedence. But Desire contains the seeds of O’Neill’s famous ghosts in the portraits of the skinflint father, Ephraim Cabot, and the son, Eben, who broods on the memory of his mother.

The play is set in the 1850s on the rocky Cabot farm where Ephraim and his three sons wrest a difficult living from the unyielding land. The two older brothers dream of leaving for the gold rush in California; Eben, their stepbrother, believes the farm belongs to him, through his mother’s claim on it. When Ephraim returns with a lusty young wife, Abbie, the emotional equation changes.

Desire is quite a switch for Szász, whose previous ART assignments have included Marat/Sade and Mother Courage as well as an Uncle Vanya that blasted open the customary setting of the play. His most recent work for the National Theatre of Budapest is a production of The Master and Margarita with 35 actors and 30 dancers. In contrast, the director says, Desire is a "kammerspiel. I’m so happy to make a kind of chamber piece. Every work I do needs to be challenging. We are experimenting with a style, how to show this icon."

Szász believes there are two ways to approach the play. "One way is just go in to make a show that is about realism and naturalism. Another is to find a form, a beautiful ballad about the relationship between father and son, husband and wife, stepmother and son, a portrait of how we miss the big moments in life. It’s a heavy, very tough play."

And what does he think of the dialogue O’Neill wrote to be spoken in a New England dialect? "The language is like music to my ears, not old-fashioned. I’m not reading O’Neill’s stage directions. My zero point is thinking about the lines. The play will be really physical. We’re taking the working very seriously, the daily routine of their lives. We’ll have the house and the trees, but when you step inside, you will step into the dirt. It’s about the land, the rocks, the stones.

"The play, this story, can happen anywhere, the ’60s, the ’70s, 2005. We don’t want to make a museum piece. We don’t know the limits of human nature. In O’Neill, the characters are going to the edge."

Desire Under the Elms is presented May 14 through June 12 by the American Repertory Theatre at the Loeb Drama Center, 64 Brattle Street in Harvard Square. Tickets are $12 to $72; call (617) 547-8300.