The Dance of Death

Description

Play something kitty-cat-ish . . . sweet. Imagine I've died and you're gallopingthrough fields. As their thirtieth wedding anniversary approaches, Alice and Edgar are lockedin a bitter struggle. They've driven away their children and their friends. Theirrelationship is sustained by taunts and recriminations. When a newcomerbreaks into the midst of the fray, their insular lives threaten to spin out of control. We're all just bodies and when we're dead we're worm food, but as long asyour body keep going, flailing or thrashing about, we are duty bound to fight,to scratch and kick, until you're fucked. That's my philosophy. Laced with biting humour, The Dance of Death is August Strindberg's landmarkdrama about a marriage pushed to its limits, adapted in a thrilling newversion by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The Dance of Death opened at the Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Theatre inMay 2022 before going on UK tour in an Arcola Theatre, Cambridge ArtsTheatre, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Oxford Playhouse and TheatreRoyal Bath Productions co-production.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz's plays include The Night Season (National Theatre, Critics' Circle's Most Promising Playwright Award, 2004) and Her Naked Skin (National Theatre, 2008), which was the first play by a living female playwright to be staged on the Olivier stage. Other plays include The Invisible (The Bush), Jane Wenham, Soho, The Painter (Arcola), The Typist (Riverside Studios), The Lioness (Tricycle), That Almost Unnameable Lust, Shoreditch Madonna, Blue Moon over Poplar (Soho Theatre), A Soldier's Tale (Old Vic), Invisible Mountains (National Theatre), Faeries (Royal Opera House), Justitia (Peacock Theatre), and adaptations of Ibsen's Ghosts (Arcola) and James's The Turn of the Screw (Almeida). Film includes Colette, Disobedience and Ida, co-written with Pawel Pawlikowski, which won a BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, 2015. August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a Swedish dramatist, novelist, poet and essayist. His plays include The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), Creditors (1889), The Stronger (1890), Easter (1900), The Dance of Death (1900), A Dream Play (1902) and The Ghost Sonata (1907).