Martial and marital, Strindberg’s psychodrama from 1900 about a warring couple becomes a brutally effective black comedy in Richard Eyre’s staging. Until now I’d considered this pivotal work, perched between the dramatic traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries, something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Eyre, who also adapted the script, made me see it anew, as he did with Ibsen’s Ghosts when he staged it at the Almeida with Lesley Manville in 2014.
Here, Will Keen brings an aggrieved pugnacity to Edgar, the ailing, petty-minded and domestically tyrannical captain of an island artillery battery. Lisa Dillon is pert, peremptory and self-seeking as Alice, the former actress who married him in the hope of advancement and has never forgiven him for their lack of social progress. Geoffrey Streatfield – whose very name suggests a sort of wearied decency – is Alice’s visiting, unhappily divorced cousin Kurt, caught in the middle of their power games.
