Marriage on the Rocks

WHEN Attorney General Bobby Kennedy won the conviction that sent Teamsters' boss Jimmy Hoffa to prison, many people wondered whether blind justice hadn't been waylaid in favor of a grudge. The word was that Kennedy had a vendetta and that it was selective justice that had put Hoffa away.

The Loeb production of August Strindberg's Dance of Death which opened on the mainstage Thursday night does for marriage what Kennedy did for Hoffa. The play is a drawing room misery in which a captain of the coast artillery and his wife Alice have by their profligate hostility doomed themselves to a life alone in the rooms of an island fortress off the coast of Sweden. They are a grim pair proceeding through their days with ritual bitterness; only the occasional Morse Code eruptions of the domestic telegraph set and the arrival of the Third Character divert the flow of venom from its daily course, 4.

Director Laurence Senelick's fine staging against designer Franco Colavecchia's gray gauze castle walls follows closely Strindberg's instructions but with an updated and perhaps too colloquial translation. David Gullette's swaggering Captain seems too much a continental officer to have to resort to such declasse words as "bullshit." But on his own time Gallette never falters and strikes matches with such extraordinary virtuosity it is surprising he has such a difficult time with his cigar. Darcy Pulliam does nearly as well as Alice and perhaps it was only an echo from the medieval decor that gave some of her speeches the worn and familiar tone of Hollywood Tudor melodrama. At times also Martin Andrucki was more awkward and wooden than the Kurt he portrayed and in the climachi scene with Alice he showed his passion with the grace of a self-conscious grizzly with romantic designs on a Yosemite picknicker. Behind the set the lone sentry paces with stoicism that shows him willing to wait for the development of the theme's comic potential in the second act.

Strindberg explicates the bleakness of marital life by demonstration, as the program tactfully puts it, "ad nauseam." Alice and the captain don't even have the consolations that a family argument affords with its own drama, distinct identity and kiss-and-make-up reconciliation. Their condition is static bitchiness that will go on forever until death-do-them part. After a while of this, even after Kurt arrives, it's difficult not to hope that death had better hurry up.

The second act is a flowering of all these frustrations that makes up in humor and liveliness for the earlier part's deprivation. At last the Captain lunges at Alice with his sword; after an hour of nasty quarreling the most moving--and exciting--scene is when the Captain gets to act alone. He cheats at solitaire and then ransacks the room with great flair. But what is most important is that the couple finally decides to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary.

Perhaps because of the severity of Strindberg's indictment of marriage it is not surprising if optimistic 20 year olds and pre-seven year itchers should find the first act over whelming. Always a popular target and one which has been riding particularly low in recent years, marriage doesn't really deserve such unrestrained vehemence. And Senelick is ruthless in his prosecution. Senelick has dealt with these love-hate relationships before. When fed up with what he considered the Loeb's non-theatrical organization, he founded "Harpo", the Harvard Producing Organization. Senelick choose for the inaugural performance "Married Alive"--a collection of three one-act farces on married life including George Bernard Shaw's Overruled, George Feydeau's Madame's Late Lamented Mother and Chekov's Wedding.

Strindberg and Senelick seem to have their vendettas and perhaps blind justice has been waylaid.