Who would have thought a play titled “The Dance of Death” would be one of the funniest shows in town?
August Strindberg hardly has a reputation as a cutup. But the Red Bull Theater’s revival of his 1900 classic plays up the scathing humor in his portrait of a long-married couple who are tearing each other to pieces.
As superbly played by Daniel Davis and Laila Robins, these folks make Albee’s George and Martha look like lightweights.
Set on a remote island fortress, the play depicts the tortured relationship between military captain Edgar and his wife, Alice, on the eve of their 25th anniversary. As is evident from the play’s first moments, the couple has long ago abandoned any pretense of civility. They don’t even both to hide their rancor upon the arrival of Alice’s cousin Gustav (Derek Smith), who had introduced them.
“My life sentence is to hate him until the day he dies,” Alice announces.
The relationship is complicated by Edgar’s deteriorating health from a heart condition, the symptoms of which include episodes of dementia. When he suddenly freezes like a statue in front of the concerned Gustav, Alice tries to put her cousin at ease.
“Oh, that,” she says casually. “It happens.”
Gustav finds himself drawn into the couple’s emotional machinations, his feelings of horror complicated by his own romantic history with Alice. Their passionate feelings are soon rekindled, resulting in a torrid encounter with sadomasochistic undertones.
Mike Poulton, who worked similar magic when he reworked Turgenev’s “Fortune’s Fool” on Broadway a decade ago, has delivered a pungently funny, searing adaptation that respects the period while making the couple’s emotional warfare seem ready made for an episode of “Dr. Phil.”
Davis’ beautifully mellifluous voice makes Edgar’s venom all the more disconcertingly hilarious. He’s never funnier than when recounting how he impulsively shoved his wife into the roaring sea.
“I don’t know what came over me,” he says blankly.
Robins, late of Broadway’s “Frozen” and “The Real Thing” and whose porcelain beauty is more striking than ever, gives Alice a formidable steeliness, gasping with delight when her husband collapses. And Smith is deeply sympathetic as the befuddled interloper.
Superbly directed by Joseph Hardy, this is a “Dance of Death” you’ll want to join.