PicksInSix Review: The Dance of Death - Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Steppenwolf Steps Boldly Into Strindberg’s ‘Dance’
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Ronald Keaton
Now playing at Steppenwolf through March 22, the Swedish playwright August Strindberg's taut, visceral play “The Dance of Death” is a story of a power struggle within a long marriage, the emotional abuse it produces, and the influence of societal laws on personal relationships. And in a remarkable adaptation by the great Irishman Conor McPherson, it becomes more than just a dark comedy full of societal turmoil as molded from the grand hands of a Steppenwolf stalwart, director Yasen Peyankov.
There are three characters in this play, all filled with their angst. The story is about a married couple storming quite haphazardly toward their 25th wedding anniversary. They hate each other in brutal and ferocious ways. The husband, who is called Captain, is an artilleryman who rules his home with a military fervor of iron. His wife, Alice, is a former actress. They live in isolation on an island— it doesn't matter where it is. Their two children don't live with them, as their parents have methodically turned them against the other parent. The Captain is having heart problems and may not have long to live. Alice sometimes plays the piano as her husband dances a kind of bizarre sword pattern. As he dances, she hopes it might kill him, and he threatens to cut her out of his will. Enter Kurt, a distant cousin to Alice, and the man who introduced the couple to each other. Kurt has his own history about him. He's divorced and the courts have banned him from contact with his own children. Kurt has come to the island to, as he says, "find peace"... read: got religion. Both Captain and Alice have their own versions of Kurt's role in their beginnings. All three are doggedly distrusting of life and of each other.
Jeff Perry offers one of the most eccentric, unique comic performances imaginable as the dominating Captain. It's complex and challenging, almost Pythonesque. In these experienced hands, Captain is at once a full-on monster of a marriage partner, only to be self-denigrating and capricious in his authoritarian revealing of his own inferiority. With an ever-present mustache and brass-buttoned coat, Mr. Perry grabs us from his first entrance with a wild walk and interpretation that forces us to hold on in its creative joy. Thank you, costume designer Ana Kuzmanic.
Kathryn Erbe as Alice, the long-suffering yet dish-it-back wife, is also elegantly inflated in her opinion of herself. Alice has funneled her theatrical ways into her married life. So many of her responses, while just as withering, take on a sniper's mount. Ms. Erbe is simply marvelous in her expertise here. The entire relationship moves almost violently toward an obvious, modern comparison—Edward Albee and his George and Martha. Both couples can only express their hate and anger in such ways that somehow the codependency evolves into a strange kind of love. And unlike Martha, who lets it all go all the time, this Alice takes her shots carefully without much raising of the voice.
Alice and Kurt show a sexualized regard for each other, one that takes a bit of a side trip into aggressive behavior. Kurt (Cliff Chamberlain as a man seemingly unaware of his own weaknesses in character) is, at first, so innocent and righteous, dazzled by the emotional battle in front of him. Then he lets his guard down, expresses his long-dormant attraction to Alice, and realizes the predicament into which he has arrived. It all, of course, drives him out the door with the proclamation "You both deserve this hell you've created!" Mr. Chamberlain is both charming and powerful.
The monolithic castle the couple lives in was born from the fertile imagination of scenic designer Collette Pollard. Lee Fiskness creates a lighting design of wide variety, with subtle tones in the family battleground area combined with sharp, revealing shafts of light and shading. Ultimately, one might rightfully ask what makes such desecration of the human spirit so funny. In the knowing minds of both Mr. Strindberg and Mr. McPherson, we are held in total thrall by an excellent cast and crew that step so boldly toward such storytelling.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | RONALD KEATON received an Equity Jeff Award for the performance of his one-man show CHURCHILL. www.solochicagotheatre.org. Coming soon, his new solo play about Ben Franklin, THE FIRST EMBASSY.
PHOTO|
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
presents
The Dance of Death
Downstairs Theater
1650 North Halsted Street
through March 22, 2026
WEBSITE
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