Entertainment

Misguided revival of Strindberg’s ‘A Dream Play’ is random senselessness

When August Strindberg wrote “A Dream Play,” in 1901, he was mentally shaky, having just emerged from a bout of paranoid psychosis. This may explain why the plotless work is a lot more freeform than a masterpiece like “Miss Julie.” The vignettes in “A Dream Play” are more of a head trip, infused with Strindberg’s interest in spirituality, including Buddhism.

For some reason, director Andrew Pang thought this gave him license to include interpretive pole-dancing.

Rica de Ocampo can skillfully wrap herself around a vertical beam — as well she might, having been crowned the 2011 Polesque champ in Brooklyn. In times of boredom, which are many, you find yourself wondering if that activity could punch up other classics, like “Hamlet” or “The Iceman Cometh.”

The real point is that there’s no point, no clue as to why the pole-dancing is even there — Pang has set the action in a nondescript netherworld of gray, blocky set elements, not the Bada Bing! lounge. But then you have no idea what’s going on in this high school-level production from the National Asian American Theatre Company.

“A Dream Play” loosely tracks the adventures of Agnes (Tina Chilip), the daughter of the god Indra (Brent Yoshikami). He dispatches her to Earth so she can get firsthand experience of those weird Homo sapiens.

“They are a seething mass of contradictions, illogic and immorality,” he warns her. “They also drink too much.”

The well-meaning but under-equipped cast is unable to help us figure out what the various characters Agnes meets mean to represent, and many choices just seem arbitrary. Why, for instance, does the quarantine master in bright-blue rubber gloves (Siho Ellsmore) speak in a vaguely Australian accent?

Strindberg touched on the world of theater itself, as well as marital hell — something he was all too familiar with. He also mocked the official authority embodied by deans of philosophy, medicine, law and theology. For those roles, the actors wear black gowns and wigs made out of what look like toilet-paper rolls. You can’t tell whether this is cheap design or a lame joke.

The same confusion happens when adapters Pang and Sung Rno try to punch up some lines, as when a lawyer (Alexis Camins) informs Agnes that “cabbage is cheap, nourishing and good. It is a superfood.” Oh brother.

The best thing about this “Dream” is that, eventually, we wake up, and it ends.