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Beate Hein Bennett
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is not exactly known for writing comedy, much less farce, unless one considers the farcical elements in his dark marital tragedies. Thus it is with some expectation that one comes to see the Strindberg Rep’s American world premiere of the semi-autobiographical marital comedy (or satire) in Robert Greer’s translation and in his direction. The play sketches the vagaries of marital love and jealousy, immature infatuation and languorous flirtation in a household of four ill-matched characters—three impetuous women and one rather feckless man. Husband Axel and wife Olga, the elderly landlady, the Baroness, and her teenage daughter Rosa engage in an ever-changing pas de quatre of seduction and repulsion. “First Warning,” subtitled by Strindberg as a Comedy, was probably written sometime in the late 1880s. In 1892 it was accepted but not performed by Sweden’s Royal Theatre (Dramaten) because the actors boycotted the play for morality reasons. However, in January 1893 it premiered at the Residenztheater in Berlin to great success, and was subsequently printed by the Swedish publisher, Bonniers. The play falls into the same period as “The Creditors, a Tragicomedy” about marital distress and its consequences. Both plays contain autobiographical vestiges about his stormy marriage with Siri von Essen, his first wife. In September 1910, it was finally staged in Strindberg’s own theater, the Intima Teatern in Stockholm. In fact, in 1913, the year after his death, the Intima Teatern re-staged “First Warning”, this time as a prelude to “The Creditors.” Ingmar Bergman, the famous Swedish theater and film director produced “First Warning” several times, once in 1948 and again in 1960.
Early contemporaneous criticism of Strindberg largely relied on Victorian moralistic principles about sexuality and intimate relationships between men and women. Modern feminist criticism has often accused Strindberg of misogyny. However, a close reading of his plays shows that his portrayal of male/female relationships deals really with the exchange of power. Female desire for agency in a society that has largely relegated women to submissively supportive roles collides with male fear of losing potency in a relationship with an independent-minded woman—his plays are power games between partners that can turn deadly. “First Warning” turns the potential ‘Dance of Death’—the title of his most mordant drama-- into a parody. Robert Greer’s modernizing translation and direction emphasizes the parodistic elements of the play while allowing the “warning” message to simmer below the exchanges among the characters. He sets the play in 1950s Switzerland—a little cuckoo clock suspended high on the downstage left column gives the hint—in the original script Olga and Axel rent a room in a German Baroness’s house. No credit is given to the set design but Alex Bartenieff designed the lighting. Greer intersperses different musical motifs, mostly songs from popular musicals of the 50s and earlier to which the Axel and his wife Olga, or Axel and Rosa, or Axel and the Baroness partner dance, as they might in a 50s ballroom, with varying degrees of competency or grace. Stage Manager Jose F. Ruiz serves also as dance captain. The costume design by Billy Little mixes styles: for Olga and the Baroness slightly tawdry elegance, for Rosa teenage informality, and for Alex a somewhat sloppy ill-fitting brownish suit.
Last not least to the actors in this swift moving little Strindberg morsel: Natalie Menna plays Olga as mostly bemused by her husband’s roller-coaster emotions, ranging from furious jealousy to clumsy adoration. Mike Roche is husband Axel whose sexuality and sanity is challenged by three women of different ages and differing styles of seduction. He suffers from emotional whiplash that is expressed with a grotesque smile or downright horror; for forty-five minutes he makes several unsuccessful attempts at escape. Holly O’Brien plays Rosa, the Baroness’s precocious daughter, as a vixen and dyed-in-the-skin actress with all the clumsy panache of a teenager who unmasks the adults’ pretenses—she is and gives the ‘first warning’ of trouble that lurks beneath the surface. Anne Stockton plays the Baroness affecting a tightly controlled elegance with a somewhat mysterious air. Robert Greer and his cast, as well as Theater for the New City, should be commended for offering this rare morsel of Strindbergian humor to a New York audience interested in finding old-new chestnuts of theatrical delight.
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