Desire Under the Elms

based on the play by Eugene O’Neill

Theatrical Western

The play focuses on the family of Ephraim Cabot, a deeply religious and despotic farmer. Twice widowed, he fills his own life and that of his three sons with grueling labor and tension over the inheritance that will one day be theirs, digging invisible chasms between the members of the family.

The news that the elderly farmer has suddenly married Abby—much younger than him and in need of a home—drives the older sons West and leaves the youngest, Eben, alone to fight for his legal claim to the land. Tragic passions are unleashed when the embittered Eben and Abby discover that suppressed desires lie beneath their hostility toward one another.

Director Denislav Yanev’s production examines land as a territory that gives its owner an identity, and as an object that brings radically opposing and irreconcilable views of “ancestral right” to a head.

Creative Season 2023/2024 “The Land”

• Adaptation and direction: Denislav Yanev
• Set and costume design: Svetoslav Mitov
• Choreographer: Nedelya Gancheva
• Composer: Nikolay Vladimirov

Cast

Tsvetan Peychev (guest), Lyubomir Furkov, Kalina Milanova, Bozhidar Popchev, Atanas Makhnev, Margarita Markova