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.
