Le deuil sied à Électre

During the first half of the 20th century, Eugene O’Neill relentlessly explored the profound social inequalities and open wounds of American society through his plays. With Mourning Becomes Electra, directly inspired by Aeschylus’s Oresteia, he transposes the ancient tragedy to New England during the Civil War in 1865.
In an aristocratic family both admired and despised by its neighbors, the inevitability of death is hastened by the war’s end. Love, jealousy, murder, and guilt are the constants of a tragic humanity: Lavinia and Christine Mannon, daughter and wife of Ezra Mannon, compete in manipulation; Adam Brant, the family’s hidden son, resurfaces to avenge his childhood. The men of the Mannon family, who returned alive from the battlefield, will soon be six feet under. Across the centuries, it is war that brings tragedy back to the present—unleashed violence that sweeps us up in its wake.