It's Personal: Two Macabre Dances, a Half Century Apart

Steppenwolf Theatre is in the midst of an extended run of "The Dance of Death", August Strindberg's astringent 1900 play about an aged/aging couple's abusive - if entertaining - relationship, trapped - or volunteered - within a bleak, combative marriage that seems to anticipate the landscapes of everything from Beckett to Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff, 

It's a vivid, superbly acted production, and it put me in mind the last time I encountered this play.  It was 1970, and the family had decided to make spring vacation trip to Washington, D.C.  On a day when my sister accompanied my dad on a trip to the Government Printing Office. GPO's Chicago operation, in the massive old Post Office with the Eisenhower Expressway running through it, was where my Dad spent pretty much his entire working life, printing what he called "The Synopsis" but was officially The Federal Register, thick daily volumes on cheap paper listing all federal government rules, notices and regulations

https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/objects/10768/arena-stage

My mom chose instead to take in a matinee at the Arena Stage, and that seemed the better bet to me. Harry Weese was the architect, beating out 50 others, for the octagon Arena Stage, completed in 1961.  It was reportedly just the second theater-in-the-round ever built.  Arena Stage has a history of important productions, invlufinh The Great White Hope with James Earl Jones as boxer Jack Johnson, which made Arena Stage the first regional theater to have a production transfer to Broadway.

Credit: Archive of Affinities on tumbler

For a 17-year-old whose previous exposure to theatre, ourtesy of my grandmother, was watching from high up in the balcony the residents of River City running across the Schubert Theatre stage in frantic search for Harold Hill in the road production of The Music Man, with Forrest Tucker, it was a bit of a shock.

First, in this intimate space, the actors weren't a hundred feet away, but right in your face.  And these weren't the Iowa innocents of Meredith Wilson's classic, but a deliberately nasty bunch, a married couple in constant, acidulous battle.  It was theatre as car wreck - Strindberg's expert theatrics and often hilarious lines meant, no matter how appalling, even shocking, you couldn't look away. I didn't understand a lot of it, but the observed strains in my own parents' marriage made it weirdly resonant.

The combatants in this production,as a younger-than-his-role Edgar, was Rip Torn, the outstanding character actor whose memorable performances ranged from a Face in the Crowd to Men in Black and 30 Rock, and as his wife Alice, the luminous Viveca Lindfors, who had starred in a 1956 revival of Strindberg's play Miss Julie..  The pivotal role of Kurt, the long absent visitor that basically puts everything in motion, was played by Mitchell Ryan, the square-jawed actor who would go on to a long career in film and television.

The play was directed by Alfred Ryder, better known as a ubiquitous actor with over 100 credits on IMDB, who was The Arena Stage's longtime resident director.  Others in the cast were Julie Garfield, daughter of John, and Robert Walden, later Joe Rossi on Lou Grant, as the battling couple's children, and, as "Sentry", Richard Sanders, who would gain immortality as the nerdy, perpetually bandaged Les Nessman on WKRP in Cincinnati. The Arena Stage's PR guy was Alton Miller, who would go on to become Chicago Mayor Harold Washington's press secretary.  

The production was generously received, and so a transfer to Broadway was mounted.  The role of "Sentry" remained, but the kids were ditched. (Strindberg wrote a Dance I and a Dance II; adaptations draw from both.) Michael Strong (104 IMDB credits) took over the role of Kurt.  The revival opened at the Ritz Theatre April 28, 1971. The New York Times all-powerful theatre critic Clive Barnes judged it as needing "more style and less heat" and it closed after five performances.  Torn would return multiple times, but neither Lindfors nor Ryder would return to Broadway again.

The current Steppenwolf revival is grounded by Collette Pollard's spectacular set, which covers the edges of the stage in rocks to emulate the shore of the island where the action takes place.  The one-set living room is the well of an abandoned prison turned domicile, which is both a striking backdrop and an invidious, claustrophobic metaphor for self-incarceration within a viperous marriage.  

The 2014 version of Strindberg's masterpiece written by Conor McPherson is clear and true, blowing off the dust and making the dialogue fresh and immediate. Yasen Peyankov's direction keeps the elements of comedy, tragedy, and shock in suitably unstable balance.

Steppenwolf Theatre photo, Michael Brosilow

The performances - Cliff Chamberlain as eviscerated visitor Kurt, Steppenwolf veteran Jeff Perry as the Captain, and Law & Order's Kathryn Erbe' as Alice - are superlative, evoking laughs, dread, and terror in eloquent equal measure.  You won't find a better night in the theatre, and you have through March 22nd to see it.

Steppenwolf Theatre photo, Michael Brosilow

I think I understood at least a little more than I did back in 1970, almost ruefully aware of how time curdles, and early innocence more complicated than it seemed at the time.

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From the Arena Stage playbill, an interview with Mr. Strindberg