By HOWARD TAUBMAN

If you think that Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” is old-fashioned and creaky, go down to Bleecker Street, in Greenwich Village.  The revival unveiled last night by the Circle In The Square has a tension and passion rarely found in our frequently attenuated theatre.

Essentially this is an elementary story.  Its strange and its scenes of seduction, festivity and murder are so simple and bare that at first blush they seem rudimentary like the play of a naïve writer working a rustic vein.  But thanks to his flaming sincerity, O’Neill turn his material into elemental drama.

Approached as it is without a trace of condescension, the play turns out to have a granitic power that reflects its rocky New England setting.  Jose Quintero, who has repeatedly proved his sympathy for O’Neill, has directed this revival as if the play had never been done before.

Sharing the honors with Mr. Quintero are Colleen Dewhurst and George C. Scott.  Both have the technical range as actors and the inner resources of intensity to make their roles ring with truth.

Mr. Scott brings the required harshness and cruelty to the character of Ephraim Cabot, the fierce, flinty septuagenarian who as forced the grudging New England soil to yield fruit, but who has not been softened by age or man.

Miss Dewhurst plays Abbie, the woman seeking a refuge and a home, with admirable richness of development.  From the moment that old Ephraim brings her to the farm she stares with icy contempt at his loutish elder sons until she leave it, destroyed, yet touched by the tenderness of love, her performance has searching light and shade.

In the third vital role, Rip Torn cannot match his colleagues’ technique and fire.  He looks the part of Eben, and when the young man moons like a calf he conveys a sense of callowness.  But there is something strangely hollow about his performance, particularly his voice, whenever he is required to reach into deeper areas of feeling.

The extensive open playing space, sparingly set by David Hays, conveys the impression of greater reality than do decors with an abundance of furnishing and details.

With the help of Mr. Quintero’s staging and by the absorption of the performers, including Lou Frizzell and Clifford A. Pellow as the elder sons and a group of cheerful guests at Ephraim’s party, one feels the sweep of a hilly landscape, and the resistance of the stony soil and the brutal inbred lives.

The Circle In The Square reminds us once again how cavalier the American theatre has been with its own accumulated wealth.