Star rating: ****

There's barely a major American twentieth century play which doesn't in some way mourn its nation's self-destructive love affair with whichever gold rush blinded them to the greater good.

Eugene O'Neill's 1924 play takes a literal approach to this.

Set in an 1850s New England shack, the three emotionally stunted Cabot brothers await the return of their pious, money-obsessed father Ephraim and his hungry young bride Abbie, who he's effectively bought cheap.

On their return, Abbie and the youngest and most sensitive sibling Eben become lovers, the consequences of which eventually destroy the already rocky foundations the Cabot home is built on.

Given some of Eugene O'Neill's other works, there's less melodramatic bombast than you might imagine in this slow, simmering burn of a play.

Jeremy Raison's production, set inside the house's skeletal wooden framework, distances the action somewhat, but the punctuation of each act with dream-like dumb shows, as one character or another attempts to reclaim some space for themselves alone, gives it purpose.

This, though, is a play about greed and need. In terms of capitalist economics, it's an erotic pulse which eventually destroys everyone.