Review: DANCE OF DEATH, Orange Tree Theatre

Photo credit: Nobby Clark

Known in his home country as a polymath, August Strindberg is familiar only as a playwright in the UK, and for only a few of his many plays. His more humorous works are largely unknown here, but it is remarkable how much dark humour has been excavated in Richard Eyre’s masterly production of Dance of Death.

It’s a deeply thoughtful, intelligent and invigorating take on the text, illuminated by a trio of actors at the top of their game (other extraneous characters have been cut) and supported by an expert creative team. Eyre’s adaptation makes the central three-way relationship the only focus throughout, and we follow these characters as they inhabit an unhappiness of their own creation. He has moved the setting from 1900 to 1918, making the island a quarantine station during the Spanish Flu epidemic.

Geoffrey Streatfeild is a thoroughly convincing cousin Kurt, entering masked as required by his role as Quarantine Inspector, and seemingly emotionally masked throughout. It’s a clever and subtle performance, upturning our expectations and creating an uncertain and lost figure. As Alice, the wife trapped in a loveless marriage, Lisa Dillon is heart-rending: she is the tragic figure at the centre of the play and she spirals ever downwards as the men around her abandon or deceive her. As Eyre suggests in the programme, this is “marriage as a form of warfare” and as such, a precursor of many later plays.

The third member of the trio, Will Keen, is magnificent as the military officer, Edgar. He is like a coiled spring from his first entrance and in the close quarters of the Orange Tree, it is a fearsome performance, whether threatening all around or succumbing to another seizure. These three actors respond to Eyre’s direction and create what must be a definitive production of this piece. Eyre’s adaptation and setting the play in 1918 works well too and the ominous clattering of the telegraph printer is a powerful dramatic device.

Ashley Martin-Davis contributes a set (beautiful Nordic light by Peter Mumford) that summons up the claustrophobic home on the island as well as the angry sea that surrounds it, and his costumes too provide the necessary details that tell us more about these characters. When Edgar insists on dancing to his favourite military march, choreographer Scarlett Mackmin creates a sequence of movement which is as dramatically effective as Alec Guiness’ dance in Habeas Corpus.

The play ends where it started, with these two figures trapped in a joyless marriage and, in this production, sitting exactly where they were when the piece began. This is an extremely satisfying production of a difficult play, enhanced by detailed, bravura performances, and led by a director/adapter who has created something quite remarkable.

***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Chris Abbott

Dance of Death plays at London’s Orange Tree Theatre until 7 March, with further info here.