About the work
August Strindberg's chamber play „The Dance of Death" („Dödsdansen") was written in 1900 and is among the most significant marriage dramas in world literature. In claustrophobic confinement it shows a war of mutual destruction between husband and wife grown over decades. The play is regarded as a forerunner of the theatre of the absurd and a direct model for Edward Albee's „Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?".
Plot
The retired artillery captain Edgar and his wife Alice, a former actress, live isolated in a fortress tower on an island they themselves call „the little hell". Shortly before their silver wedding their marriage is a practised system of mutual torment, contempt and dependence. Into this poisoned world steps Kurt, Alice's cousin and old friend, who is to run a quarantine station on the island. The captain draws him into his intrigues, humiliates him and tries to ruin him; Alice in turn seduces Kurt to revenge herself on her husband. Among the three a vampiric game of attraction, hatred and manipulation unfolds. When the captain is struck by a stroke the balance of power shifts — yet the couple remain chained to each other to the end, unable either to love or to let go.
Cultural significance
„The Dance of Death" is a milestone of modern psychological drama. Strindberg's merciless anatomy of a destructive marriage anticipated the relationship dramas of the twentieth century and directly influenced authors from Eugene O'Neill to Edward Albee. The play belongs to the standing repertoire of the international stage; productions with great acting couples are regarded as proving grounds of the character actor's craft.