Club kids are familiar with the strange goings-on at The Box, the intimate Lower East Side venue that specializes in modern-day burlesque and risqué vaudeville acts. But the hot spot’s current offering, the Private Theatre’s adaptation of August Strindberg’s 1893 comedy “Playing With Fire,” offers titillation of a more rarified, theatrical kind.
This little-seen work is one of the few comedies written by the normally morose Swedish playwright (“Miss Julie,” “The Dance of Death”). It’s being presented in a freewheeling, site-specific adaptation by Royston Coppenger that renders its tale of a complicated love triangle — a married couple and the husband’s best friend — into a barely comprehensible, sexed-up performance piece.
Much of the play’s sophisticated dialogue has been replaced by familiar avant-garde stylization. The performers roam throughout the two-level environs of the jewel-box club, with the action spilling over from the tiny stage into the aisles and balcony.
Since the sightlines are poor, roaming videographers film the proceedings, with the results shown on large screens.
A cast of 14 performers — some of them looking so young they probably needed to be carded to enter the club — play the work’s six characters, inevitably resulting in confusion. The R-rated action, which includes explicit language and mimed sexual acts, is augmented by ear-splitting techno music and frantic choreography that threatens the physical safety of performers and viewers alike.
The obscure play seems a strange choice for this sort of loose treatment, since it’s unlikely that patrons will be even remotely familiar with it. Unlike “Sleep No More,” the similarly abstract, site-specific adaptation of “Macbeth” that’s wowing crowds at the funky McKittrick Hotel, there’s little here in the way of familiar scenes to anchor the proceedings.
John Gould Rubin’s staging is admittedly impressive on a sheer visceral level, and with the help of a few drinks — the more expensive table tickets come with a bottle of booze — audience members might find themselves swept up in the fast-moving presentation that lasts less than an hour.
But theatergoers looking to absorb the intricacies of Strindberg’s play will find themselves at a loss. And after enduring the high-tech, multimedia assault, they’ll newly appreciate the song that loudly plays on the deafening sound system at the evening’s conclusion: “I Will Survive.”
Tickets start at $25, VIP tables are $65 to $175.