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August Strindberg’s 1887 drama is probably best avoided by newlyweds and parents-to-be. At the centre of this domestic tragedy is a startlingly vicious battle between a father and mother over the fate of their child. It turns them both demonic, one red-faced and raging with madness, the other cool, collected and horribly ruthless.
Laurie Slade’s excellent adaptation carefully avoids making the tussle between The Captain and his other half Laura a one-sided slanging match against women. Laura’s actions are shocking: in an attempt to stop her daughter Bertha from being married off, she deliberately tricks her husband into thinking that Bertha isn’t his, planting a seed that leads to his breakdown. But Slade makes a plausible case for her tactics being a result of the way society and The Captain have treated her.
That’s not to say we don’t feel exceptionally sorry for The Captain. Alex Ferns plays him brilliantly: blustering, jumpy, with a quick temper and sad eyes. He’s the lone man of the house among a group of women and he is desperately trying to cling to his masculine authority. Though Ferns’s Captain is loud-voiced, he is the one with the softer heart and for that he pays a terrible price.
Abbey Wright’s smart, swift and vigorous production has almost entirely black costumes and set, hinting from the start that things aren’t going to turn out well. And perhaps that’s the play’s problem. There’s little subtlety and hope in it. Husband and wife have their horns locked from start to finish, and as the drama tumbles to its inevitable conclusion, you can’t help but feel that in writing this play, Strindberg was getting a load off his chest. What’s more, though Emily Dobbs plays Laura’s contradictions about as well as one ever could, her character is difficult to swallow. Her tender moments towards The Captain are always at odds with her appalling actions.
It’s intense, awful and an example of the potential depths of human cruelty. Be warned: if you have any faith in love or humanity, this play will go some way to crushing it.