Jealousy, murder, revenge
U of O production has everything it needs to shock and disturb its audience
THE UNIVERSITY OF Ottawa’s Drama Guild is making this theatre season a truly haunting aff air. Their spring production, Mourning Becomes Electra - The Haunted, joins a rich text with a creative performance style, taking mystery and melodrama to a whole new level.
Mourning Becomes Electra is a step outside the norm for the Drama Guild—rather than a somber historical piece or an upbeat comedy, this play is characterized by its dark tone and sinister themes. Written by Eugene O’Neill in the 1940s, the play Mourning Becomes Electra explores the psychological degeneration of several characters as they partake in murderous acts of revenge, betrayal, and jealousy.
“It is a play about scheming, manipulation, and trying to get the upper hand—finding ways to get what you want,” explains director and U of O professor André Perrier, who adapted the play for this performance.
The play is an adaptation of the Greek myth of Orestes. In the mythic tradition, Orestes is the son of King Agamemnon and his wife Clytemnestra. When Agamemnon, who fought as a commander in the Trojan War, returns to his homeland he is murdered through the plotting of his wife and her lover Aegisthus. The next name on his mother’s hit list, Orestes goes into hiding—though not without swearing revenge. Years later, an adult Orestes returns to his home country with his sister Electra who, along with her brother, brings about the death of their mother and her secret lover.
In the play itself, however, the events do not take place in ancient Greece. Instead, the murderous plot is played out in one of the Northern states during the American Civil War—Orestes has become Orin Mannon and Electra, though still his sister, is called Lavinia. Th e plot remains very similar to the original tragedy but, as Perrier explains, is altered to work within a modern context.
“[Mourning Becomes Electra] is a very modern version of a Greek tragedy,” he says. “It is an extremely complex, beautiful piece.”
O’Neill’s original version of Mourning Becomes Electra is in fact not one stand-alone play at all, but a three-part cycle of plays. The Drama Guild’s production is of the third and fi nal play in the trilogy, known under the subheading The Haunted. In his adaptation of the play, Perrier attempted to integrate as much of the tension and mystery of the previous two parts, Homecoming and The Hunted. Perrier also expanded the plot of the third play to include several key events in the two prior plays.
“I have incorporated the other parts because everyone in the fi rst and second part are already dead by the third. They come back as ghosts. That is my fiction,” explains Perrier. “[These ghosts] are trapped within the house because it was built by the grandfather out of hate. They re-enact their deaths and murders repeatedly until they are freed.”
The production brings together mystery, melodrama, and horror into a unique sort of hybrid: instead of basing the tension on the emotions of the melodrama, the director decided to move the focus more toward the characters and their intimate conflicts.
“[The play involves] a very high type of melodrama with some expressionism,” he says. “When I did the auditions, I realized very quickly that if we played on the melodrama that it would quickly become like a soap opera—that was the wrong way to go. Th is production I am pushing the acting.”
According to Perrier, by shift ing the focus, the play begins to resemble the plot of an archetypal murder-mystery.
“It borders on an Agatha Christie [novel],” he says. “It becomes more mysterious—we have created more of a hybrid [between mystery] and modern horror.”
Perrier and his cast are enthusiastic that the changes are going to make the play that much more interesting for the audience.
“I think this is a classic for anybody,” he says. “It is a wonderful play.”
Mourning Becomes Electra – The Haunted will run in Academic Hall (133 Séraphin Marion St.) every night at 8 p.m. from March 9 until March 13. Tickets are $10 for students and are available at the door.
