Think of Edgar and Alice as the Swedish Al and Peg Bundy, trading barbs and dirty tricks up until the very last moment when they realize that despite everything, they can't live without each other. By treating August Strindberg's play more as wickedly dark comedy than viciously Bergmanesque drama, director Sean Mathias gives the estimable Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren much to play with, even if they can't quite make the underplotted, repetitious first act and occasionally off-the-wall second act turn into some kind of powerful statement about codependency. As the pawn in their game, David Strathairn's okay doing his usual shy-guy routine but at sea when his character must shift into lustful desperation.
For all the evening's drawbacks, I'll still take the modern-sounding bickering of Dance over the faux-modern Freudian feminism of Hedda Gabler.
