The Father

Tonight, Sunday night at the Loeb Experimental Theatre

STRINDBERG MUST have known a tough lot of women. "The Father" portrays the gradual disintegration of the solitary male in a 19th century Swedish household. He is surrounded by women who range from naive and loving to unscrupulous and crafty in their oppressive imposition of their worlds and dreams upon him. The females are not totally to blame, however. Strindberg makes use of the early psychological theories of his time to show this father's personal weaknesses, subconscious mental cancers in his marriage, and obstacles to his fulfillment in his career as a soldier and scientist. These psychological afflictions are a fault in a seemingly healthy and promising individual: "The Father" concerns the cracking of that fault and the destruction of the man.

Peter Weil's production of this play at the Ex is an outstanding job, easily the equal of the best Loeb mainstage production this year. The text is difficult to handle with its superabundance of scientific and psychological material, and the translation is at least awkward in many instances. Weil's success in evident in the continuity of which distinguish the play. Careful and demanding directing is manifest in the scenes with the main characters, the father, his wife Laura, and the nurse, Marguerita, in the sculptured interaction built on the electric variety of human nature. The production is not altogether realistic, but maintains a fascinating dream-like quality which is often characteristic of times of crisis.

Sarah Clark is outstanding in her interpretation of the evil and tragic wife. This character develops brilliantly as the father's most terrible enemy and at the same time his closest, most longed after source of love. She is a woman driven by instinct rather than plan. Miss Clark is outstanding not in her portrayal of an absolute evil, but in her ability to refocus the attention of the audience through her weaknesses on the father as the prime source of his own downfall.

Petur Gudjonsson's Father seems insufficient and perhaps even bland at the opening of the play. But this is a character unaware of himself: he is created as the play progresses, as his own position and that of his sex becomes clear to him, and as his anguish overwhelms him. Caught in this process of torturous revelation, Gudjonsson is convincing and arousingly pathetic. What is most intriguing is that the father is never moved on the basis of fact, but, much like his wife, decides on the basis of inclination and reasons and rages in fantastic uncertainty. He must fail in what he is as well as what he might be, and the actor successfully meets the challenge of the role to recognize this fate early in the play and then allow himself to be destroyed.

If the production is to be criticized in any way, it is that it does not completely realize its very great potential. As it stands, however, it is excellent. It is a find and frightening thing to achieve communication of that space between the conscious and the subconscious. This is the realm of uncertainty which is offered in much of its lonely awfulness by the admirable show now at the Ex.