Timothy Ramsden
October 1995 Plays and
Players
If nothing else, this new piece shows why playwrights
should not direct their own plays though the writer here, the 52 year old August
Strindberg, is an extreme case. In
a burned out theatre (finely presented in Julian McGowan’s tattered, gloomy
and cold set) Strindberg directs his new play in which he and his first wife,
thirty years ago, are the characters. Hayman
imagines this play in a play, though as dialogue references to “playing with
Fire”, a Captain, a piano playing wife and paternity doubts make clear, he is
only making explicit what underlies many Strindberg plays.
Derek Jacobi catches excellently both the Iron
John misogyny, the loopy transcendentalism, and the humorous vulnerability in
Strindberg, which, as the young actress says, makes men irresistible to women.
She is Harriet
Bosse, to begin with. During the
interval she becomes Mrs. Strindberg mark three (as did the real Harriet).
She is the most interesting character in many ways;
most of the decision making and development comes through her and Derbhle
Crotty handles immaculately the transitions from shyness through a romantic
belief she can change her new husband (a woman change Strindberg? Oh for
historical perspective) to an alliance with Siri von Essen, the character she is
playing and a new strength, even if there hangs around it an odor of defeat as
well as an aura of triumph.
And Jamie Glover
handles well the growing assertion of the young Actor Anders Bengt, courting
Harriet onstage as young Strindberg and off as himself.
The cast is completed excellently by Caroline Holdaway who bites
succulently into the peach of a character part as the plain, middle aged and
put-upon stage manager Gertrud, running pit a pat at the director’s beck and
call and softening at a kind word from him.
It’s a rich play done magnificent justice by Richard Clifford’s
production which charts the mood shifts acutely and extracts much comedy from
the curmudgeonly (stage) director and the cussedness of a leaking roof.