Muddy Waters, a small theater organization that works from the Kranzberg Arts Center, devotes each season to a single playwright. This is Eugene O'Neill's year, which began over the weekend with a tense, almost-frightening production of "Desire Under the Elms," pairing a veteran local actor, James Anthony, with a comparative rookie, 25-year-old Franklin Killian. They're Ephraim and Eben, father and son, battling for turf and for trophies. Like so much other theater we've seen in town recently, it's passionate and angry, with parent and child struggling for supremacy, regardless of cost to themselves or to whomever gets between them.
Anthony is a big man, and he's made for the role. He's a stubborn farmer who rules his land and his home, allowing no one to question his authority. He has two sons, Simeon (Chris Jones) and Peter (Ben Ritchie), by his first wife. After she died, he remarried and fathered Eben. That wife also died. Ephraim is a bully, lashing out at the boys for real or imagined shortcomings, challenging them constantly to be the man, or even half the man, that he is. He's a totally unpleasant human being.
Eben, who could be described as being a few bricks shy of a load, is weak and needy. He talks to–and prays to–his late mother, and he is certain that he will inherit the farm. Killian inhabits the role perfectly. He stumbles on words here and there, he says outlandish things, he bounces from showing good sense to showing no sense, and young Killian offers a wonderful performance under Jerry McAdams' excellent direction. McAdams understands O'Neill and the play, and his focus never slips.
When the older boys sell their birthright for a ticket on a boat to join the gold rush, Ephraim comes home one day with a new wife, the slightly blowsy Patty Ulrich, who is very willing to put up with an elderly tyrant in exchange for the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the storm (no rainbows in O'Neill), well, things are going to change. Given Ephraim's ego and Eben's youth and true naivete, the change will be drastic.
Fine performances by the three leads, Anthony, Killian and Ulrich, and a little square dancing and hoedown tunes to lighten the tone a bit, with Laura Sexauer and Ryan Spearman providing the musci. Sean Savoie's simple set, three separate rooms behind a common room, works nicely and JC Krajicek's costumes offer a proper air of time and place.
O'Neill's work isn't easy to watch, but we've had many plays recently that have not been easy to watch. But their difficulty demands good performers and performances, and we've also seen a lot of that. And maybe Franklin Killian will stick around a while and entertain us. It will be nice watching him develop.
"Desire Under the Elms," by Muddy Waters Theatre at the Kranzberg Arts Center, through March 28
–Joe