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August Strindberg's "The Dance
of Death"
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| Brenda Wehle and Zachary Booth. |
Jan 10, 2019 - March 10, 2019.
Written by Sam Shepard, directed by James Macdonald.
Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, New York City
212-677-4210, www.classicstage.org
Reviewed by Edward Rubin Feb 5, 2019
Reviewed by Edward Rubin.
Once again, following in the footstep of their mega
hit Carmen Jones, the Classic Stage Company is setting the New York
Theater World on fire with two of August Strindberg's most riveting
plays, the sexually charged "Mies Julie", adapted from
the play "Miss Julie" by Yael Farber, and Conor McPherson's
searing adaption of Strindberg's highly autobiographical "The
Dance of Death," not coincidentally a precursor to Edward Albee's
"Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1962). It is more than
likely, as others have speculated that "Long Day's Journey
Into Night" (written in 1941-42, the play opened on Broadway
in 1956) was also influenced by Strindberg's "The Dance of
Death." Both plays are in repertory through March 10, 2019.
A polymath at heart, there was little that Sweden born August Strindberg
(1849-1912), a writer of over sixty plays, thirty works of fiction,
autobiography, history, poetry, and cultural analysis, didn't explore,
examine, fully embrace, or abruptly turn his back on when it no
longer suited him. And this included women's rights, atheism, sinology,
painting, and the ideas of Charles Darwin, Emanuel Swedenborg, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Forever restless to say the least,
Strindberg fathered five children and had three wives (two of who
were actresses, both of who acted in his plays).
One is simply amazed, how, among so many twists, turns, and turmoil
in his life, that Strindberg was able to create, on such a high
level, as much as he did. Add to this, the various crises in his
private life resulting from his marriage break-ups, political controversies,
a painful trial for blasphemy, occasional hallucinatory bouts, psychological
and drug-induced self experimentation, and years of self-exile -
much of which worked their way into his plays - and you get a fairly
accurate snapshot of his harried life.
Obviously, Strindberg, as he wrote to the Danish literary critic
Edvard Brandes (1847-1932), was driven to make his mark. He knew
what he wanted and where he had to go. "I am a socialist,"
he said, "a nihilist, a republican, anything that is anti-reactionary!...I
want to turn everything upside down to see what lies beneath; I
believe we are so webbed, so horribly regimented, that no spring
cleaning is possible, everything must be burned, blown to bits,
and then we can start afresh."
As far as the theater arena which where most of the world knows
him best, Strindberg wanted his plays to attain what he called "greater
Naturalism." He disliked the expository character backgrounds
that characterized the work of Henrik Ibsen and rejected the convention
of a dramatic "slice of life" because he felt that the
resulting plays were mundane and uninteresting.
Strindberg felt that true naturalism was a psychological "battle
of the brains:" two people who hate each other in the immediate
moment and strive to drive the other to doom is the type of mental
hostility that Strindberg stove to describe. He intended his plays
to be impartial and objective, citing a desire to make literature
akin to a science. And a verbally-sparring warring couple, akin
to Albee's razor-tongued George and Martha, is what we get in Strindberg's
"The Dance of Death."
While the mechanics of this story itself is rather simple on the
outside, it is the simmering, boiling, and frequently exploding
insides of all three characters, as their life-long pains, fears,
and regrets, come to the fro, slap us in our face. Placing all of
the action in one sparsely furnished room (formerly a military prison),
on an isolated island off the coast of Sweden, with the audience
seated on all four sides of the stage, guarantees that not a word
or action floats off into space.
Yes, Strindberg sets his table like a painting, with every character,
location, past and approaching event, playing its part, following
its destiny. It is the constantly wavering combustible behaviors
of each character, will he, will she, or will they, much like watching
a tennis match, that keep our eyes and ears glued to the stage.
Here we get a cantankerous Edgar (Richard Topol) and Alice (Cassie
Beck), formerly an actress before they married, at home alone stewing
in their own juice. Their cook has just quit after Alice insulted
her, their children are being schooled on the mainland, and none
of the soldiers stationed on the island like Edgar who is seen as
an imperious order-giving, self-righteous martinet. In short, all
they have is each other. That they are approaching their Silver
anniversary only serves to raise the play's combative temperature
a couple of notches.
Entering into this toxic fray, after an absence of some fifteen
years is Alice's cousin Kurt (Christopher Innvar). Once Alice's
lover and now divorced, Kurt, who introduced the couple twenty-five
years earlier, has just been assigned to set up quarantine facility
on the island. Regretting that she gave up her acting career –
though watching her one would never guess that she was ever an actress
– Alice tells Kurt that her marriage to Edgar is "our
long miserable mistake" and that they are "bound by some
evil force." As to be expected the actions of all three characters
are torn asunder.
Soon we are sensing, after seeing a few of Edgar's attacks and a
fainting spell, that death might be stalking the ever cantankerous
Captain. Even more shocking, as well as totally unexpected, is a
newly awakened Kurt lustily telling Alice, as they wrestle passionately
while Edgar is elsewhere, "I want to bite your throat and rip
out all of your blood like a wolf." And blood he does draw.
As the play ends, just as we saw in the play's opening, Edgar and
Alice, all played out for this day, sit down for another game of
cards, a not too subtle hint that all that has just occurred between
lights up and lights down, will continue, like many a marriage,
till death do them part.
A big surprise, and a welcome one for me, as I love her so, was
CSC's Artistic Director John Doyle's selection of Tony winning actress
Victoria Clark, (Light in the Piazza) and a director of mostly musicals
to helm this production. However, Clark's matter of fact approach
to "The Dance of Death" appeared to lessen the play's
highs and lows, thus turning the play, as enjoyable as it was to
watch, into an everyday affair, rather than a profoundly moving
experience that it could have been.
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