DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS

To create a "poetical vision illuminating even the most sordid and mean blind alleys of life"-that's how Eugene O'Neill described his concern and task as a dramatist. In Desire Under the Elms, which examines the tragic results of flinty patriarch Ephraim Cabot's return, with his young third wife, to the even flintier New England farm he built on the backs of his three sons, those alleys are lined with varying degrees of desire-for people, for place. The Hypocrites' production, so well-nestled in the basement of the Chopin Theatre that you are startled by the low rumble of the Blue Line beneath the building, illuminates O'Neill's poetical vision most definitely through the visual.

The hardscrabble place desired by the troubled Cabots is subtly conjured by designers Tracy Otwell (set) and Jared Moore (lights), almost stealing the show in what's very much an actors' play (here sensitively and meticulously rendered by the ensemble) and giving director Button an ideal canvas on which to create some arrestingly deliberative moments. The Cabot farm is so palpable that the theater smells like earth, since the floors are covered inches deep with mulch, and the home reflects the increasing destruction of the family, with disjointed rooms and a parlor lit in red, illuminating the inflamed nexus of the play. Under Button's direction, the oafish antics of the older Cabot sons, the tortured tension and explosions between youngest son Eben and his young stepmother, and the fruitless scripture-declaiming of their father unfold in a union just as seamless and as searing as O'Neill's vision of life and the poetic - Meghan Powell, TimeOut Chicago 10/4/07