Strindberg: The Real and the Surreal

STRINDBERG: THE REAL AND THE SURREAL WHEN TWO OF AMEmCA's better drama critics discuss the same play in apparently contradictory terms, one is puzzled. John Gassner describes Strindberg's Creditors as "employing naturalistic style and structure," and quotes a letter in which Strindberg calls the play a "naturalistic drama ... with three characters, a table, and two chairs."! According to Robert Brustein, however, . . . it is incredible that his earlier plays can ever be mistaken for authentic Naturalist documents. They are more like wild, irrational nightmares, which-despite their realistic apparatus -more often verge on the hallucinatory and surrea1.2 These opposing evaluations suggest the possibility that the answer may lie somewhere between the two extremes, incorporating elements of each viewpoint. Actually, the comments are not as contradictory as they first appear to be. A table and two chairs seems scanty scenery for a naturalistic drama; and Brustein mentions a "realistic apparatus" as well as "the hallucinatory and surreal." The differences seem, at least partly, a matter of emphasis. And, since few of us can measure these theories against actual productions, these statements also remind us of the general poverty of the American theater. We have too few opportunities to observe Strindberg's plays as they function on stage. As Brustein recognizes, without "the formation of a permanent Strindberg theatre . . . an appropriate Strindberg style will never evolve...."3 Californians should have been grateful, therefore, that they recently had the opportunity to see two professional productions of two of Strindberg's pre-expressionist plays. On March 16, 1962, the San Francisco Actor's Workshop began a brief run of The Dance of Death, Part One;4 and on June 4, 1962, the Theatre Group, a professional company using the facilities of the University of California, Los Angeles, imported for a three week run Paul Shyre's off-Broadway production of Creditors (which was the occasion for the critical re" 171~i7~~hn Gassner, "Broadway in Review," Educational Theatre Journal, XIV (May, 1962), 2. Robert Brusteini "Strindberg: The Victor and the Vanquished," The New Republic, CXLVI (February 19, 962), 20. 3. Ibid., p. 21. 4. Although the advertisements as well as the program called the play The Dance of Death, only Part One was perfonned. Elizabeth Sprigge's translation was used. See Five Plays of Strindberg(Garden City, 1960). References to this translation will be made parenthetically in the text. 331 332 MODERN DRAMA December marks quoted at the outset). Our gratitude is doubled because each production had qualities which the other lacked. Thus, each served to comment upon the other, and jointly they reminded one of the problem raised by Brustein: finding "an appropriate Strindberg style." Although neither company found it, I believe that the Actor's Workshop -not only because it is closer to a permanent acting company than Shyre's single production unit, but for other reasons which I will suggest-is closer to a solution. Each production chose a style and employed it consistently. Creditors was staged in the antiseptic manner of simplified realism. The lines of the stage setting (designed by Edgar Lansbury) were clear, distinct, uncluttered. The movement of the actors was the same. Through an economy of objects, business, and movement, Shyre seems to have intended to throw all attention on the psychology of the characters. By eliminating details which might detract, he attempted to force our attention on the intricacies of characterization. Unfortunately , two-thirds of the cast were not up to the task. Linden Chiles (Adolph) was inept, and Donald Davis (Gustave)-especially disappointing since he had given a superb performance a few seasons earlier in the New York premiere of Krapp's Last Tape-concentrated on his vocal mechanism and played a general concept of "sophisticated menace." Rae Allen's Tekla, on the other hand, was a stunning accomplishment which partly justified Shyre's plan. She was thoroughly hateful and at the same time enormously attractive. She was at once detestable and lovable. She caught the double-edged quality of the Strindberg woman, monstrous and fascinating. Nevertheless, the production style, though not at odds with the play, was too neutral to bring out values peculiar to it. The straightforwardness of the movement and...