In an interview before his production of Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, the director Michael Blakemore reported telling the cast to aim for “Strindberg with laughs”. The line suggests a gulf between the Swedish dark tragedian and English light comedian but the dramatists have a curious affinity.
August Strindberg’s Creditors (1889) and Coward’s Private Lives (1930) both start in hotels where a troubled couple is haunted by a former marriage. It’s unclear if the influence was conscious but, if so, would have been apposite. Strindberg identified his drama as a “tragicomedy”, the genre in which, as Blakemore recognised, Coward is increasingly seen to belong.
