Strindberg - Other Sides

"Strindberg - Other Sides: Seven Plays" presents fresh translations based upon the new national Swedish edition of Strindberg's works, hewing close to Strindberg's techniques of -scoring- his scripts for actors and directors. The plays are illuminated in introductory essays revaluating Strindberg's role in transforming theatre (and art) with his extraordinary new forms. "The Ghost Sonata" is a keystone in the construction of the expressionist theatre; in "The Pelican" Strindberg goes -over the top- with his own form of psychological drama until it soars beyond the realm of realism; "The Dance of Death" is a battle of the sexes rendered absurd, as a series of games played against the void; and "Carl XII" is an epic play portraying the last months of the king who brought Sweden's history as a great power to an end. Three one-acts from the late 1880s foreshadow the striking ambiguity of Strindberg's later works."