" The Father." By August Strindberg. (Duchess.)
TILE name of Strindberg, the centenary of whose birth we celebrated last week, woduces on all save the most earnest type of playgoer a sense of foreboding. Compared with this angry and mystical Swede, even Ibsen seems a gay dog, and on the rare occasions when we have the opportunity of seeing one of Strindberg's plays we tend to go and see something else instead. This revival of The Father reminds us that these evasive tactics are not necessarily sound. A great deal of skill, as well as a great deal of power, went to the writing of this tragedy, and the slow, careful erosion by Laura first of her husband's will and finally of his reason is a process which it is exciting as well as painful to watch. The vindictive, un- balanced note which echoes and re-echoes throughout Strindberg's railing against women lessens the play's authority but not its dramatic value ; and if Laura herself is too icy and composed a villainess to correspond to what weknow of life she is extremely effective on the stage. Mr. Dennis' Arundell's production somehow misses -the climax of horror which should come when the Captain is treacherously pinioned in his strait-jacket, but the first two acts are well done. Mr. Michael Redgrave gives a compelling and intelligent performance without, however, eclipsing our memories of Mr. Robert Loraine, and Miss Freda Jackson, as Laura, is as cruel,
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