Bleakly funny but don’t go seeking light entertainment
The Dance of Death Ustinov Studio Bath
“THAT was grim,” said a voice in the audience as this new production of Strindberg’s The Dance of Death came to a close. And indeed this play is no light entertainment but black humour at its darkest.
Written in 1900, Strindberg’s drama about marriage as a battleground has since influenced modern playwrights from Beckett to Ionesco with perhaps the best known being Edward Albee’s drama, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Now this new version of The Dance of Death, adapted by Rebecca Lenkiewicz and starring Lindsay Duncan and Hilton McRae, puts another modern spin on the theme of the inextricable link between love and hate.
Set in an isolated plague garrison – shades of parallel Covid lockdowns here – the play begins with Alice and Edgar biliously exchanging barbed comments as they discuss whether they should hold a party to celebrate their approaching 30th wedding anniversary.
The irony is that a party to which they have not been invited is taking place in the background. They have alienated everyone around them, including their own children and their servants. Then their solitude is interrupted by the arrival of a visitor.
In this version Lenkiewicz changes the gender of the guest. Where Strindberg made the visitor Kurt, a former army colleague of Edgar, Lenkiewicz chooses to explore the dynamic between two women and a man. Kurt becomes Katrin (played by Emily Bruni), a cousin of Alice.
Katrin is responsible for having initially brought Edgar and Alice together, and it is into this hothouse of marital strife that she now steps. The pair feast on her as prey – tellingly there is no food in the house, only bile. Katrin is a distraction and they need both to punish her and to use her as witness to their woes.
The play is at times darkly funny, with excellent performances from Duncan and McRae going at it like a couple of verbal duellists.
But it’s hard in this version to accept Katrin’s wooing of Alice in a sudden change of allegiance. From being a malleable gentle creature she exhibits a sudden unexpected passion for Alice. She turns from prey to vampire, biting Alice on the neck.
When she prostrates herself in a flurry of boot kissing at Alice’s feet it’s a moment not of passion but of – well, what was that all about? The gender change seems a clunky addition.
Ultimately Katrin, like everyone else, leaves Alice and Edgar to their own private war. They sink thankfully on to the sofa to resume their discussion about their anniversary. Is Edgar about to die? Will a party happen? Will there be laughter? None of it makes any difference.
Yes, it’s bleakly funny, absurdist, but despite good performances and Lindsay Duncan’s undoubted prowess as the acerbic aggrieved wife, this was not a production that held me gripped.
■ The Dance of Death, directed by Mehmet Ergen, runs at the Ustinov Studio at Theatre Royal Bath until Saturday June 4 and then tours. Call the theatre box office on 01225 448844 or go online at www.theatre royal.org.