The Ghost Sonata – August Strindberg, 1907 ★

Doing the Swedish Limbo

One reason August Strindberg appeals so much to scholars is because he was so many different people in the course of his life. He’s like getting to study a half-dozen writers in one.

He started out composing history plays, became a father of modern drama, an authority of that oxymoron called theatrical naturalism, and finally a pioneer of stage expressionism and surrealism.

By the time we get to The Ghost Sonata, he has reinvented himself again, this time as the metaphysically-focused developer of what are known as “chamber plays,” productions performed in a small space by a handful of actors. The ground he covered was varied and impressive; yet the shape of his work is hard to gauge.

A Dream Play – August Strindberg, 1902 [Translated by Elizabeth Sprigge] ★★½

When Sleep is not Rest

Genius and success often make strange bedfellows. For some artists, nothing can be more destructive than commercial or critical acclaim.

Consider August Strindberg. At the dawn of the 20^th century, he was seen by Europe’s intelligentsia as not only comparable to Shakespeare but, as Sean O’Casey exclaimed, “the greatest of them all.” Yet decades of naturalistic dramas left him burnt out. The more success he got, the more he hungered to do something more ambitious.

Thus came into being A Dream Play, one of the oddest works written for stage by a major playwright.

Easter – August Strindberg, 1901 [Translated by Elizabeth Sprigge] ★★★

Strindberg Does 'Porch Pals'

Here’s a happy, heartwarming story about a family under siege featuring a bitter man, his deluded mother, a sister who talks to God, and a straying fiancée; all threatened by an angry town and a creditor who could take their house at any moment.

And no, I’m not being sarcastic about that “happy, heartwarming” part, even if it is a play by that most dour of dramatists, August Strindberg.

The Father – August Strindberg, 1887 [Translated by Elizabeth Sprigge] ★½

Throwing Away the Envelope

What would a battle of the sexes look like if participants were less motivated by sexual desire and more by Nietzschean will to power? The Father sets the struggle of man versus woman, or rather husband versus wife, in exactly that context.

Whether the play is valid, illuminating, or entertaining as presented is a different question. I didn’t find it so, but I was born a century after the intended audience. They found this drama convincing enough to help lift its author, August Strindberg, to international fame.

Miss Julie – August Strindberg, 1888 [Translated by Elizabeth Sprigge] ★★★½

Cupid Is a Ruthless Hunter

Love is nice, but what really counts in this life is power. That cold lesson is transformed into a classic play about what happens when a servant gets too involved with the mistress of the house.

If there is an anti-Ibsen when it comes to preaching the gospels of naturalism and humanism in 19^th-century drama, it is his near-countryman August Strindberg, an ornery Swede who sneered at audiences and critics discoursing upon mankind’s hopeless condition.