Play Strindberg

Play Strindberg is an adaptation and reworking by Friedrich Durrenmatt of Strindberg's 1901 play The Dance of Death. In the original, Strindberg used the medieval Danse macabre idea as the basis for a modern morality play. Durrenmatt has extended the motif, structuring the play like a boxing match, in 12 rounds, the beginning of each round signalled by the stroke of a gone. He has pruned the play of Strindberg's more obsessive concerns (Edgar in the original is a vampire), retaining the essential story and dramatic idea and reworking the dialogue into a grimly funny little parable of modem marriage.

Very much a play for actors, the action is confined in one room. The set is sparse, the properties minimal (the captain's sword balanced across the table throughout much of the action is a nice little touch providing visual tension) and theatrical effects nil. The play depends for its success on a delicate balance between an impeccably timed dialogue and the movement of the three actors. Stuart Devenie's production is successful on these counts and his actors provided three intelligent and accomplished performances. The acting tempo never flagged and the timing and effective use of the pause (especially as Alex Trousdell as the tolerant and urbane Kurt, a fine and splendidly relaxed actor) in this difficult dialogue was good indeed.

Ray Henwood's Edgar, the histrionic and misanthropic army captain, determined to die with his boots on, 'take away his boots, there's nothing left', whose view of man is 'nothing but a barrow load of shit for the rosebeds', who fakes fainting fits in order to hear what the others are saying about him, is a good piece of character acting. Henwood invests the part with a mad-eyed megalomania. In the final throes of the play, mute in his chair, he has the tragic quality of Roualt's 'Old King.'

Dorothy Smith as the aging coquette, the actress who married for status, is the other half of the unholy alliance, bonded by hate. Her restrained performance and controlled vitriol counterpoints Henwood's more flamboyant Edgar.

Garth Frost's pallid, measled see-through set of spindly piano, couch, tables and chairs, and lampshades like elegant bat skeletons established a queasiness early in the piece. Although roping the set like a boxing ring may have been a bit heavy handed, the set worked well and neatly solved the problem, always present in theatre in the round, of not obscuring the action. The actors were able to move freely and did. The 'choreography' in fact was the high point of the production. The constant movement and interweaving of the characters created a nervous tension and carried the danse macabre motif throughout.

I wish however, that I could say I liked the play better. Durrenmatt says of it 'out of a bourgeois marriage tragedy developed a comedy about bourgeois marriage tragedys.' We've laughed ad nauseum at innumerable plays of this kind since Albee's 'Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf' a similar play indeed, and while others may care to keep on laughing I do not and, I suspect, from the absence of mirth and of the fur coat brigade on the night I went, that others may feel similarly. I'm sick of the theatre of cynicism, and of theatre as a mirror for the middle class.

I hope Mervyn Thompson has something better in store for Wellington theatregoers.

Waiting for Godot at Downstage

Reviewed by Liz Rowe

If you have stamina enough Waiting for Godot is playing at Downstage at 11 pm after Play Strindberg. Beekett moves us on even further than Durrenmatt in his unblinking examination of distress. Rather than bourgeois marriage being the source of torment for our immortal souls, the inexorable boredom of living is the well spring of pain. Godot is a pared-down, economical piece of theatre with no message, no moral, but the ability to make us feel in our marrow the anguish and annui of living. But enough of this attempt to describe the play; more than most its force eludes description, for it is carried not merely in words.

Jean Belts' production introduced two new elements to the play; all the parts were taken by women, and the play was staged in the middle of the theatre. Using women may have at first seemed merely a gimmick, a theatrical sop to International Women's Year, but in the event it proved entirely successful. Beckett's plays, especially Godot are about universal human experiences, and this production proved women, loo, can be universal, can suggest dimensions beyond the personal, beyond the sexual. Downstage is fortunate to have such a strong quartet as Susan Wilson, Donini Searell, Allannah O'Sullivan, and April Kelland. 'Godot in the round' was not so successful an innovation. The central stage may have been forced on the producer, as it was needed for, and worked superbly in Play Strindberg but it dissipated much of the force of Beckett's play. Beckett himself has sard that Godot [gap — reason: illegible][unclear: ced] closed box' and this production proved every element prescribed by Beckett is necessary. The actors still used the stage as if it were a convenional one, which left those of us not fortunate enough to be sitting centre front feeling as though we were perched in some imaginary wings, uneasily waiting for our cue.

The force of the play was also diminished by its extremely slow pace. Admittedly, the pauses in Godot axe as important as the speeches in establishing the rhythm of the play. They're used to [unclear: exterd], and and to modify the emotions suggested by the language. But in this production the pauses were so prolonged, especially in the dialogues between Vladimir (Allannah O'Sullivan) and Estragon (Domini Searell) that their tension was lost, and the emotions evaporated. Pozzo (Susan Wilson) on the other hand, handled such difficulties superbly. Expansively assured, touched with doubt only about the most superficial social niceties ('how do I sit down now I'm standing?') in the first act; by the second refusing all certainties ('One day, is that not enough for you, one day . .') she dominated the play from her first entrance. April Kelland as her servant Lucky failed, for some reason that was impossible to pinpoint, to show that anguish beyond the personal that is the essence of the part, never becoming more than an ill-treated servant.

Much of the success of the play rests on the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon, that ragged pair so chronically unsure of everything, but this relationship too was flawed in some indefinable way. Individually the performances were strong, specially that of Allannah O'Sullivan as Vladimir, end-lessly devising little canters' to pass the time till night falls, or Godot comes, or.... but the tenuous connection between the two characters was never established.

Waiting for Godot is not a short play; the performance we went to finished at 1.30. By then the late hour and the slow pace had certainly made ennui a universal experience. One perfunctory round of applause, and everyone left.