Although Rupert Goold physically checked out from the Almeida after his revival of American Psycho, this is the last of him: Desire Under the Elms is the final piece of programming in his golden tenure at the Islington theatre, with successor Dominic Cooke’s plans for the future still currently unknown, but presumably kicking in in the new year.
The last play, then, is Eugene O’Neill’s Greek-modelled 1924 tragedy Desire Under the Elms, which follows the goings on at a farmstead in 1850s New England where father Ephraim Cabot and son Eben tussle over ownership of the farm and the affections of the elderly Ephraim’s much younger new wife, Abbie.
The play is directed by Ebenezer Bamgboye, with a cast headed by Zackary Momoh as Eben: needless to say the decision to make the Cabots Black is somewhat charged with meaning in a play set in the middle of the 19th century. Abbie will be played by Kelly Gough, which is a curious piece of casting as the only other major London revival this century – at the Lyric Hammersmith in 2012 – starred her sister Denise Gough in the same role.
