The Lyric is advertising this 1924 play as “Eugene O’Neill’s rarely seen masterpiece”, and for the first 90-odd minutes of Sean Holmes’s gripping new production I couldn’t figure out why it’s not seen more often. Yes, it takes a bit of time to get going, as Eben, the youngest son of a tough old New England farmer, Ephraim Cabot, talks and negotiates with his two half-brothers. But great though, say, Long Day’s Journey into Night or The Iceman Cometh are, nobody ever accused them of concision either.
That’s not the way O’Neill does business. He circles, he prods, then he surges. And, as Ephraim returns home with Abbie, a new wife half his age, O’Neill is mixing mythical storytelling (some Phaedra, some Medea