Not the best choice for a first date, maybe, this new production of Strindberg's scathing, bilious portrayal of wedlock, written after a period of insanity and the failure of two of his own marriages. Approaching their silver wedding anniversary, Edgar and Alice live in dreadful isolation, in a wartime fortress nicknamed Little Hell, in the midst of enemy territory. Against this bitter backdrop, they have made their own diabolical emotional territory. Both as bad as each other, at least in the first part of the play (a sequel, oddly cheery, is included in the production), they have alienated all their friends and their children with their warring to the death. Alice's cousin, Kurt, pays them a visit, sparking a new round of attack and counter-attack.
The challenge with Strindberg is to make the symbolic, vicious landscape convincing. Thanks to Gregory Motton's fine new translation, and Stewart Laing's steely direction, this is done, though there were a few suppressed barks of laughter at the more melodramatic moments. These are scripted moments, however, with Strindberg unable to show tenderness here without self-conscious hamming-up. "Where am I?" slurs Kurt, bewildered, when Alice strokes his cheek. This gentle mood lasts for seconds only. They are soon discussing another couple on the island who also celebrated their silver wedding recently. She had to wear her ring on her right hand; he had cut the fingers off her left one with his penknife.
The central performances give the right sense of irreversible horror. Tam Dean Burn captures Strindberg's idea of Edgar as a "refined demon", while Anne Marie Timoney's Alice wins and loses our sympathy, just as she should, as she rejects but then mimics Edgar's wickedness. In a clinch with Kurt, she turns all dominatrix ("kiss my boots"), while he - a seeming innocent when he arrives - gives bites for kisses.
The sequel undoes this macabre atmosphere. Gone is the gloomy horror of the room in which Edgar and Alice have awaited "the wonderful peace of death". In a light-flooded room, we meet Judith (Edgar and Alice's daughter) and Allan (Kurt's son), the next generation. They are the products of this violent dysfunction and yet they are redemptive figures, restoring some emotional normality at the end. We're not quite humming Love and Marriage as we leave, but we're not gnashing teeth and wailing, as we would be without the sequel. That's about as cheery as it gets with Strindberg.
Until November 18. Box office: 0141-429 0022.
