Word: strindbergism
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Henrik Vogler (Erland Josephson) is a renowned stage director, now embarking on a new production of August Strindberg's 1902 fantasia, A Dream Play. In the pivotal role of Indra's Daughter he has cast young Anna Egerman (Lena Olin), who is the daughter of two of Henrik's old acting colleagues. One afternoon, following a rehearsal of the play, the dozing Henrik is awakened by Anna. They sit on an old sofa and chat about their crossed lives and their shared art. The talk drifts to Anna's dead mother Rakel, and in the wink...
...present. Just the memory of Rakel can make him feel a sense of loss, as he considers her promise destroyed by drink, abuse and self-hatred. Only Anna's threat to walk out on the play can rouse him to wrath, for she is betraying not just Strindberg or her fellow actors or the audience, but the holy Henrik. Like any other man, he is susceptible to the attentions of a strong, beautiful young woman; like any other director, he can both experience an emotion and observe it from a dispassionate distance. And so Henrik and Anna talk themselves...
Short sketches of O'Neill's era set the stage for O'Neill's entrance into the theater world. Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov and Synge were dead. In America, travelling companies that repeated Shakespeare or other European imports were very popular. Yet, says Berlin, these were only "escapist, money-making entertainment," yet to be considered art. Making that leap to original art was the accomplishment of O'Neill and his amateur theater group, the Provincetown Players. Also credited with bringing vemacular to the American stage, he set many of his plays in backgrounds that demanded specific U.S. regional dialects. His ease...
...three simple table lamps he creates moments of horror and tension all the more stirring because they do not rely on stage-lighting techniques. He exploits all the dramatic possibilities of the room's split levels and often brings the actors into and behind the audience. This intimacy serves Strindberg's work well. Rarely do more than two people appear at once in the play, and the audience needs to be close enough to catch the actors' subtle expressions and turns of speech...
Fitzpatrick has chosen The Stronger, a short Strindberg play, as a prologue to introduce the undercurrent of manipulation that runs through The Creditors. It is the weaker of the two plays at Quincy. This bizarre dialogue in which one interlocutor is silent holds great potential for a confident actress, but Barrett rushes through the scene with few pauses, leaving no time for Kristiina Harrison to react, and leaving the audience no time to understand. (This weekend, Barrett will play the silent role and Sarah Sewall will go on as the speaker...