Play It Again, Friedrich

JUST A BARRELLOAD of shit on the way to the rose-beds." Edgar the need-up army officer in Play Strindberg, referring to his wife himself, marriage, life is general. That cheery thought illuminates the combat between Edgar, his failed actress of a wife Alice and a cousin Kurt who "coupled them up" 25 years ago, and now returns to contribute some of his banker's wealth and unction to the silver wedding anniversary Friedrich Durrenmatt's 1968 re-writing--or choreographing" as he terms it--of Strindberg's Dance of Death converts that play from a tragedy about marriage to a comedy about marriage tragedies and translates it into the terms of Brechtian "epic" theater.

For one evening and the next day Edgar dances through a series of staring insensible fits toward death In the intervals he aims scornful missiles at his wife's illusory memories of greatness and builds his own defensive illusions We sound a bell got twenty more years yet "Kurt arrives in time to catch a few of Edgar's barbs and sit up with the ailing solider til morning.

Then a couple of tricky reverses Edgar claims to have been taking his attacks, and after a trip to town, announces plans to divorce his wife and marry Kurt's ex spouse That gentleman, meanwhile, has taken possession of Alice and their plans to leave together are squashed only by Edgar's threat to reveal Kurt's history of embezzlement. But a final seizure takes Edgar out of the picture, leaving him paralyzed. He states inanely at the audience and groans out words which only his wife can translate for us. Kurt leaves husband and wife to revel in their misery

THE DEATHDANCE becomes many dances Edgar's twirling his sword and locking up heels whole his wife plays "The Entry of the Boyars", the staggering onset of his fits and above all the comic verbal dance from mockery to self-deception, stomping in the process on as many toes as possible. Under F.M. Kimball's direction, comic tension links the opposing profiles of actors or inhabits Edgar's sickly stare over the audience's heads At the beginning of each short sequence--signalled by a bell, and announced by the actors as, say, "Round Number 4: Alice Philosophizes"--the actors take carefully set poses before pitching into their fray.

Durrenmett, one of Bertolt Brecht's most skillful disciples, works for "epic theater"--theater that tells its story without attempting to delude the audience that it is actually happening. He has cut Strindberg's work up into small sections, added and subtracted material, and worked out changes in collaboration with the actors who first produced the work. There is typically Brechtian disrespect for the sanctity of the source, and a typically Brechtian effort at distancing the audience through frequent interruptions.

Franco Colavochia's setting leaves the offstage visible treating us to Edgar's incoherent shouts as he conducts an inspection of troops in the background, or Kurt's profile rearing up behind the couple as they anticipate his visit. The scene, a simple bourgeois interior, never changes, but the dramatic unities are split wide open by the flow of the play.

AFTER SHE GETS warmed up, and has mastered a peculiar sneering smile, Stockard Channing as Alice puts on a pungent performance that has apparently learned something from Elizabeth Taylor. Throwing back her head in a hollow laugh, grandly reclining on a couch, she is just decent enough to her husband to make it hurt when she finally applies the knife.

Paul Benedict becomes a bit too automatic in presenting Edgar's half of the thrust and parry, but knows how to get the most out of humor based on repetition "We'll say no more about this" he concludes several exchanges, and delivers the line at just the right time in each instance. Benedict plays a character whose motto is "eliminate, wipe out, carry on" in a manner suggesting a malicious version of Edmund Muskie.

Larry Bryggman gives Kurt a set of bobbing eyebrows and poses which sometimes seem too stiff, too prolonged even for a tycoon from the age of Rockefeller. At times his politeness grows strident and reveals the exploiter that lurks beneath, but never quite clearly enough.

If at times lines get caught in the cross-fire or slip into obviousness, the production is on the whole masterfully staged and acted. Play Strindberg is no great achievement; Durrenmatt's original works stand far above it and deserve more stagings of their own. But it is a solid piece of comedy and at the New Theater brings first rate professional drama to Harvard Square.