THEATER REVIEW – CRITIC’S CHOCEPlay Strindberg
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THEATER REVIEW – CRITIC’S CHOCE
The sweet science of marital satire
Hope Alexander's sleek new production of Friedrich Dürrenmatt's play is a knockout.
ROB KENDT , The Los Angeles Times
Friedrich Dürrenmatt's hilariously caustic reduction of the impassioned, often lyrical marital tragedy "Dance of Death" could more accurately be titled "Play Against Strindberg."
By excising peripheral characters, trimming or sharpening dialogue, and subverting key plot points for "Play Strindberg," Dürrenmatt's free adaptation mercilessly skewers the brooding Scandinavian temperament of early 20th century drama.
Dismissing Strindberg's "literary side" as "plush to the nth degree," Dürrenmatt, the author of such bleak mid-century classics as "The Visit" and "The Pledge," effectively torches the furniture and sandblasts the veneer from this bourgeois parlor; he even sets his version in a metaphorical boxing ring and divides it into 12 rounds.
It's gratifying to report, then, that director Hope Alexander's smart, sleek new production is a knockout.
Providing most of the show's formidable fighting weight is Joe Garcia as a vain, ridiculous army captain confined, as if in an elaborate punishment, to an island tower with his embittered wife, a former actress of dubious talents (Holly Jeanne).
The impish Garcia is the kind of mercurial comic powerhouse who has the audience safely in his hands from the moment he enters — but he uses this privilege judiciously, with a prankster's precision. This is true even when he's drilling for crude, as in a gut-busting solo aria of gluttonous gorging in which the food might as well be scenery.
The zaftig Jeanne serves up strong, droll support, while Travis Michael Holder, as a visiting cousin with foggy motives, walks an ambivalent, mostly reactive line with flustered aplomb. But this is Garcia's show to walk away with, and so he does, mischievously and irresistibly.
Dürrenmatt's acerbic, quick-witted satire of marital and social aspiration could hardly be in better hands than Garcia's or Alexander's. Their gloves are off.
L.A. Weekly
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If you can imagine a marital bout with the trappings and ceremony of a boxing match, you’ve got a fair idea of the concept behind Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s rarely performed gem. Dürrenmatt uses the characters and situation from August Strindberg’s Dance of Death and transforms it into a farce set on a deserted island where Edgar (Joe Garcia), a “celebrated military man of letters,” and Alice (Holly Jeanne), “a celebrated actress,” have endured 25 years of a nightmare marriage. For 12 “rounds,” they indulge in a hilarious duel of psychological battering, snipes, accusations and emotional one-upmanship. The sudden appearance of Alice’s cousin, Kurt (Travis Michael Holder), adds gasoline to the fire, as he is drawn into their convoluted relationship and is forced to reveal some long-held secrets. Holder and Jeanne are quite good, but this show belongs to Garcia. Whether strutting about in his uniform, parrying with a sword, mugging, attacking a meal with manic sensuality, or having a cataleptic seizure — which he frequently does — he’s a riot. Hope Alexander directs masterfully. Company Rep, 5112 Lankershim Blvd., N. Hlywd.; Thurs.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 2 p.m.; thru Feb. 22. (818) 506-7550.
PLAY STRINDBERG at The Company Rep
MELINDA SCHUPMANN, BackStageWest
The psychotherapist Amy Bloom said, "Marriage is not a ritual or an end. It is a long, intricate, intimate dance together and nothing matters more than your own sense of balance and your choice of partner." In August Strindberg's case, the institution was A Dance of Death, a play in which a husband and wife live in mutual hatred, bound together by the convention itself. Friedrich Dürrenmatt's 1969 dark comedy parodied Strindberg and carried the notion even further into a surreal and almost hallucinogenic world of wicked caricature. The story is thin and filled with contrivances, but the actors for whom he created it have a chance for 90 uninterrupted minutes to practice their craft with gleeful abandon.
The play is a boxing match in 12 rounds, and the principals are introduced as combatants. Joe Garcia is Edgar, a failed military man who has been exiled to a remote island, where the inhabitants ostracize him further because of his abrasive nature. Holly Jeanne is his wife, Alice, a purported actress who believes that marriage destroyed her chances for greatness. The third member of the ménage is Travis Michael Holder, playing Kurt, a cousin of Alice's and, it is later learned, her former lover. The bell rings. The action commences.
Each round is titled--"Conversation Before Dinner" and "Company at Last," for example--and the battles are spirited and often ruthless. Dürrenmatt satirizes the inherent failure of marriage as a picture of two souls in symbiotic hell--sometimes nurturing and sometimes vicious, but always hilarious. Edgar and Alice are disdainful of their fellow compatriots, aware of the social life of the post but excluded from it. Edgar has fits that cause him to appear insensible. Sometimes the fits are real, and sometimes they are a ploy to eavesdrop on his wife. She reviles him during them, and, in one instance, sneaks away with Kurt to make love. Garcia takes full advantage of his preening, pompous captain. Physically agile, he collapses, springs to his feet, dances the ritual dance of the boyars, and generally takes center stage whenever he appears conscious; actually, sometimes he manages it even though he is frozen in a military salute on the floor. In one classic scene, he devours a dinner, noisily slurping soup and doing things to a bologna that could change a rating from PG to R in a twinkling. Holder and Jeanne are well cast and delightful but are no match for Garcia's eyebrow lifts and ebullient choreography.
The director, Hope Alexander, has an eye for comedy, and her brisk pacing moves the absurdist drama nimbly forward. She also fills in as costume designer Esther Blodgett, and her bio in the program is worth the price of the ticket.
Dürrenmatt's unhappy marriages may be the catalyst for his clever satire, but whatever the motivation, he produces a picture of a 25-year marriage that is both amusing and frightening. Alexander says she is "drawn to theatricality," and her characters' bizarre sparring produces contagious energy that delivers the goods.
LAURA HITCHCOCK, CurtainUp
"The great world is the same. Only the dimensions are different," snarls one of the protagonists in Friederick Durrenmatt's scathingly farcical adaptation of the marriage portrayed in Strindberg's Dance of Death. Durrenmatt has both pared down Strindberg's tragedy and broadened the frustrated fury of its battling spouses to make them a metaphor for his view of society.
Edgar, the Captain, who looks like a cross between Napoleon and Hitler, deludes himself that he is a military man with literary talents. His wife, Alice, retorts with her own adjusted memory of being a celebrated actress. They spar their illusions, insults and pains back and forth like tennis players from one side of the stage to the other in Hope Alexander's crisp brilliant staging. The sports metaphor is enhanced by the division of the action into the 12 rounds of a boxing match, each announced by the actors.
Alice's exits and entrances are always made with the sweeping gestures of a Victorian melodrama. Edgar, who disdains the neighbors on the provincial island where they live even while he avidly spies on them with binoculars, falls into trances triggered by a military salute. Alice takes advantage of these lapses to vent her rage at her barren life, calling Edgar, among other things, a despot with the soul of a slave.
One of Alexander's most stunning set pieces is Edgar's solo supper, in which he wallows in sipping and chewing with voluptuous sexuality. Joe Garcia does full justice to the fierce stubborn Edgar, rimming his wretchedness with sly humor. As Alice, Holly Jeanne is permanently on rage and sarcasm but at moments her face drops into expressions of childlike desperation and vulnerability.
Alice and Edgar's games and maneuvers play off their unexpected guest, Alice's cousin Kurt, whom Alice tries to seduce and Edgar tries to blackmail. This hapless apparently innocent bumbler turns out to be the greatest crook of them all. Travis Michael Holder never lets his guard down and the smugness of his final victory comes as a complete surprise.
Despite the change in Edgar's condition and the couple's efforts and struggles, the final scene of this marriage as mirror of our world, is downbeat. Nothing changes.
Durrenmatt's world view was most famously reflected in his bitter The Visit, in which a woman bribes an entire village to destroy the lover who jilted her. Here he finds the heightened sense of farce in the prison-like marriage, and underscores its isolation by setting it in a lighthouse on a distant island.
The music, most notably the haunting "Solveg's Song", was composed by Max Kinberg. Luke Moyer designed an understated period set. The whimsical costumes are credited to Esther Blodgett, (a name associated with A Star Is Born) who has somehow lived in all the same places as the fiercely imaginative Director Hope Alexander.
