August Strindberg is probably best known in the UK for his 1888 play Miss Julie. Although this 1900 play shares certain features with that earlier, naturalist text – a realistically presented enclosed, domestic situation; three main characters; a possible love triangle – the tone of The Dance of Death is more mystical, its focus the human condition rather than the effects of heredity and social conditioning on individuals.
The extent of the play’s influence on modern drama is remarkable; as Michael Billington notes in the programme, the writings of Edward Albee, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett and Jean-Paul Sartre all owe it a debt. This new adaptation by Rebecca Lenkiewicz, as directed by Mehmet Ergen, with its emphasis on arch comedy in the exchanges between warring husband and wife, suggests another link – to the Noël Coward of Private Lives.
Captain, the spurs-jingling despot, and Alice, bitterly regretting the sacrifice of her acting career to domesticity and motherhood, have been unhappily married for almost 30 years. Hilton McRae and Lindsay Duncan (who met in 1985 and have one child) invest their characters’ barbed banter with a mixture of playfulness and viciousness. The relationship is convincing but doesn’t achieve the sense of horror, of dicing with damnation, which imbues Strindberg’s text.
Similarly, Lenkiewicz’s decision to change the character Kurt to Katrin dampens the dramatic charge. This long-absent cousin’s arrival introduces hope – that the destructive misalliance can be ended and Alice be liberated from Captain’s tyranny. However, in the period setting (meticulously realised in Grace Smart’s design), relations between the sexes are not simply interchangeable: Captain’s bullying of a woman produces a different effect to his bullying of another man, for instance. Lenkiewicz’s text does not allow for this; although Emily Bruni brings great presence to the role, this pivotal character comes across as a shadow of its original.
Ultimately, Ergen’s production, while it sporadically entertains, skirts the challenges posed by Strindberg’s profound exploration of existence.
The Dance of Death tours until 23 July
