Review: Dance of Death, Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath – ‘An excellent piece of theatre’

The people-who-hate-each-other genre isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but done well, it makes for landmark drama.

You know the kind of things – Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Sartre’s Huis Clos, much LaBute and Pinter. But August Strindberg beat them to it, writing The Dance of Death in 1900.

The thoughtful, muscular and rightly well-acclaimed dramatist Rebecca Lenkiewicz has adapted this Strindberg drama for a UK tour with co-producers, the Arcola Theatre, Cambridge Arts Theatre, the Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Oxford Playhouse and Theatre Royal Bath Productions.

A storm rages. Jolly party tunes float over on the wind. Alice (Lindsay Duncan) and Edgar (Hilton McRae) face their thirtieth wedding anniversary. They are not happy. No-one likes them, and they choose to stay on a barrack-island hell, while Edgar suffers what might be schizophrenic episodes and seizures and may die fairly soon.

For a while, it seems as though they are deeply fond of each other, just fallen into that old-love habit of poking and teasing. But when Alice’s cousin Katrin (Emily Bruni) arrives (rewritten by Lenkiewicz from Strindberg’s male cousin, Kurt), then just as in ‘Who’s Afraid…’, the presence of an outsider means the games can begin.

This isn’t a fun play. But it is an engrossing one.

Lindsay Duncan as Alice in The Dance Of Death – photo: Alex Brenner

Duncan, McRae and Bruni give superlative performances, worth watching more than once. You will laugh warmly at first, but it will fade as you become engrossed in their troubling, toxic dynamic.

Thankfully, there is no interval to break the pace or the tension. Strindberg,  Lenkiewicz and the cast keep teasing us with chinks of hope; it’s not just that they keep the cauldron on the boil – they’re making it hotter and hotter with every tick of the clock.

Hilton McRae plays Captain alongside Lindsay Duncan – photo: Alex Brenner

Grace Smart’s set and costume scream “Strindberg!” before even a word is uttered (in a good way); David Howe’s lighting design is a joy (watch for the chandelier as sun-dial, during Edgar’s fugue state); Kristina Arakelyan’s music and Dan Balfour’s sound are hauntingly ideal.

This is an excellent piece of theatre. Directed by the Arcola’s Mehmet Ergen, here you will absolutely get “Strindberg”. There’s nothing “wildly theatrical” like a back-to-front story, or its being set in a 2060s Trumpian ocean-empire.

Apart from marking Kurt into Katrin and adding a few “cunt”s and “fuck”s this looks like traditional, ‘safe’ theatre – if you assume that that’s what a play from 1900 must be.

What this excellent adaptation really highlights is that you don’t need thought-tricks or gimmicks to make great drama “edgy”. In the hands of insightful dramatists, human relationships are always disturbing.

The Day of Death is showing at the Ustinov Studio, Theatre Royal Bath from Monday to Saturday until June 4. Tickets are available at www.theatreroyal.org.uk

Main photo: Alex Brenner

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