DANCE OF DEATH.
London
DANCE OF DEATH
by August Strindberg adapted by Richard Greenberg
Lyric Theatre To 7 June 2003
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat Wed & Sat 3pm
Runs 2hr 30min One interval
TICKETS: 0870 890 1107
www.rutheatres.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 5 March
Many good moments but a blandness overall.Door-to-door in Shaftesbury Avenue there's Geraldine Aron's My Brilliant Divorce and Strindberg's drama of a 19th century drama of a terrible marriage. 'Little Hell' the artillery captain Edgar's island home is called, and the grate in the middle of the floor suggests it's just above inferno level – though what lies below is the dank jail where Alice at one point plots to land her husband.
Flames flicker throughout the play, giving light but the real heat's in the fury the wedded combatants bring to their lives together. Of the founding fathers of modern drama – drama that expresses the post-religious, splintered-identity age – Strindberg and Pirandello are the two whose forceful perceptions chafe against individual obsessions: with Pirandello it's illusion and reality, in Strindberg the war between men and women.
Edgar's a failure by any standard; he even prefers the telegraph to his 'phone as he can avoid having to speak to anybody. Ian McKellen's muttering character's given-up on life, marriage and himself. His roars at times increase the sense of hollow invective: there's no sense of a future left to go anywhere.
Alice is different. Francis de la Tour may use a luxuriant wig to be sexy and there may be little growth beneath it any more, but she's younger, still able to sense she might be living a different lie: the deliberate, fulfilling one of acting instead of the useless, painful grind of marriage.
But sexy's one thing de la Tour doesn't do well. There's something ironic, commenting, distanced in the facial expression; far more so in the voice. She may leap into Kurt's arms, but there's no sense she's giving herself. Nor is she helped by Owen Teale's stolid Kurt, old friend and useless spare piece in this production.
There is, though, a fine set by Robert Jones, continuing the idea of the tower-home to remote heights, intensifying the sense of isolation in its huge emptiness. At the start McKellen's tucked away in his chair, while de la Tour slowly paces the far wall: their focus of attention as far divided as possible. It's an image of the protagonists, but too much of also of a production which never quite comes together in full-force intensity.
Edgar: Ian McKellen
Alice: Frances De La Tour
Kurt: Owen Teale
Jenny: Hayley Jayne Standing
Maja: Ann Firbank
Director: Sean Mathias
Designer: Robert Jones
Lighting: Jon Driscoll
Sound: Fergus O' Hare
2003-03-14 00:39:37