Mourning Becomes Electra is a play cycle written by American playwright Eugene O'Neill.
The play premiered on Broadway at the Guild Theatre on 26 October 1931 where it ran for 150 performances before closing in March 1932, starring Lee Baker (Ezra), Earle Larimore (Orin), Alice Brady (Lavinia) and Alla Nazimova (Christine).
Before Seth can continue, Lavinia's friend Peter Niles and his sister, Hazel, arrive.
Seth believes Brant is the child of David Mannon (Ezra's uncle, who later hanged himself) and Marie Brantôme (a French Canadian nurse), a couple expelled from the house due to fear of scandal and public disgrace.
Calculatingly, Lavinia derides the memory of Brant's mother, who died of starvation as Ezra never replied to a message she sent for help.
He tells Lavinia that her own grandfather (Ezra's father) also craved his mother and thus cast David out of the family.
Christine then appears to agree to Lavinia's terms but proposes to Brant that they poison Ezra and attribute his death to his heart trouble.
Act III One week later, Lavinia stands at the top of the front stairs with Christine waiting for Ezra.
Ezra rises in fury, threatening to kill her but falls back, clutching his heart and begging for his medicine.
Orin sits at Christine's feet and recounts his wonderful dreams about the two of them in the South Sea Islands.
Lavinia reappears in the room and coldly calls Orin to view their father's body.
Act IV The night after Ezra's funeral, Brant's clipper ship appears at a wharf in East Boston.
Orin kneels beside her promising he will make her happy, that they can leave Lavinia at home and go abroad together.
Act I, scene 2 In the sitting room, Orin grimly remarks that Lavinia has stolen Christine's soul.
Orin jealously mocks his sister's warmth toward Peter, accusing her of becoming a true romantic during their time in the South Seas.
Act II A month later, Orin is working intently at a manuscript in the Mannon study.
Orin angrily accuses her of sleeping with one of the men on that island and Lavinia assumes Christine's taunting voice.
Act III A moment later, the scene switches to Hazel and Peter in the sitting room.
Surprised by the bitterness in his voice, Lavinia desperately flings herself into his arms crying, "Take me, Adam!"
She orders Seth to board up the windows and throw out all the flowers – then she enters the dark house alone and shuts the door.
In 1947 the play was adapted for film by Dudley Nichols, starring Rosalind Russell, Michael Redgrave, Raymond Massey, Katina Paxinou, Leo Genn and Kirk Douglas.
In 1967, the Metropolitan Opera gave the world premiere of an operatic version, composed by Marvin David Levy to the libretto of William Henry Butler.
In 1978, a five-hour television miniseries was produced for and shown on PBS' Great Performances, which starred Bruce Davison, Roberta Maxwell and Joan Hackett.
In 2010 was adapted in India in the Malayalam language as Elektra (2010 film) There are literary readings that classify Mourning Becomes Electra in the naturalism movement.
This is based on O'Neill's focus on violent emotional states of men to emphasize the subconscious and inner spiritual forces[4] as well as man's inability to escape the cyclical pattern and outcomes of human action.
Like the Oresteia, the play explored the theme of revenge, where the crime of the past determines the actions and the suffering of the protagonist in the present.
[5] For this theme, some observers note that O'Neill's approach is more similar to William Shakespeare's outlook in Hamlet than Aeschylus' in Oresteia.
[6] O'Neill also differed from Aeschylus on the theme of fate and the role of the gods in the lives of men.
In Oresteia, as was the case in the classical Greek tragedies, the divine is part of the environmental forces that humans cannot control but determine their fate.