Dreamy

URI tackles Strindberg's thorny Play

by Bill Rodriguez

A DREAM PLAY, by August Strindberg. Directed by Rob Melrose. Set design by Christian Wittwer. With Jennifer L. Hays, Joshua Willis, Jason Harrington, Alida M. Kronsberg, and Fabio S. Iannella. At URI Theatre through February 25.

August Strindberg was not a happy camper. Whether he drew a play from one of his unhappy marriages or from life at large, he displayed the fury of a child left for an endless summer on Camp Earth by an uncaring Parent. Nowhere is Strindberg more petulant than in A Dream Play, which is getting a respectful and vigorous production by URI Theatre.

With these 14 blackout scenes, framed as the dream of a poet, the dour Swede was as free of the constraints of naturalistic theater as the master of Expressionism would ever be. In the 1901 play, he has the Hindu god Indra's daughter (Jennifer L. Hays) come down to Earth to experience life as a human being. She has dealings with such archetypal characters as a military Officer (Joshua Willis), a lawyer (Jason Harrington) and the poet (Fabio S. Iannella). As you'd expect from the offspring of Vedic divinity and maya (illusion), she is miserable.

A Dream Play often is described as Strindberg's most poetic stage work, but it could also be described as his most immature -- psychologically, not structurally. It has all the self-absorbed intensity of a child's first stammering tirade against life's unfairness, although the playwright was 52 when he wrote it, with scores of plays behind him. The story rushes at us breathless with its late-breaking nihilistic news that the world is cruel, much as Melville and Twain did late in life with Pierre and What Is Man? Between the playwright's commitment to deliver a message and his fascination with Swedenborg mysticism, the theatrical sermon was bound to shout down any request that theater be uplifting. Yet director Rob Melrose is good at handling the play's whining quality, which Strindberg saw as profundity. Melrose maintains a tone that allows for humor -- such as playing the Mission: Impossible theme music when Indra's daughter decides to break the Officer out of prison. For a scene that takes place in a cave, a floor light projects on a backdrop shadows that get huge and small by turns, reminding us of Plato's allegory of the cave and reinforcing the theme of illusion.

Despite the play's stridency and belaboring of the obvious, Strindberg's genius does show now and then. When theatricality is allowed to evoke what preaching cannot quite stammer out, we get a pleasant surprise. For example, the playwright not only finds the perfect image for romantic idealism, he foreshadows Waiting for Godot by 51 years. In a repeated scene, the Officer keeps returning to a stage door, fading roses in hand, year after year, as the beautiful Victoria (Alida M. Kronsberg) keeps promising that she will be just another minute.

And every once in a while Strindberg has a character say something so pithy and on-target that it illuminates as he hasn't in whole scenes of previous exposition. My favorite is when a bridegroom (Michael O'Hagan) promptly agrees to the suggestion of his new wife (Jena M. Romano) that they commit suicide before things change. As he sweeps her up in her wedding dress and marches into the surf, he admits: "I'm afraid of happiness. It's deceitful." There is intentional humor in a schoolroom scene, timed with finger-snapping precision by Melrose. That dream within the play/dream (which is within our life/dream) has the Officer siting next to a schoolboy and being upbraided by a schoolmaster. The image and exchanges are echoed by three other sets of them at three other chalkboards, as the Officer is reprimanded for being insufficiently mature.

The set by Christian Wittwer, with its metal ladders and walkway, strikes the right cold mood, further enhanced by Charles Cofone's chillingly evocative sound design and Mark Walsh's lighting.

The misogynistic Strindberg is known best for his brilliant and intricate dissections of hellish marriages, in such plays as Miss Julie. But while A Dream Play in places may sound discordant to our ears, URI Theatre has made its timeless quality ring clear as a bell.