The Dance of Death at A Noise Within

The Dance of Death

A Noise Within
3352 E Foothill Blvd Pasadena

No one drilled deeper into the underworld of human intimacy than August Strindberg. It's there, in the pitch-black depths of the human soul, he found theatrical gold: his enduring masterpiece, The Dance of Death. Long before Martha ripped into George in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Alice laid deep into Edgar in this startling and ever-contemporary drama. Living on an isolated island, the deeply dissatisfied couple "celebrates" their silver wedding anniversary in ways that amaze, repulse and engross. Now A Noise Within presents the West Coast premiere of a new translation acclaimed by The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. These taut scenes from a marriage sing with sexual tension and spark with bursts of brilliant revelation.

Thru - Nov 23, 2014

Price: $46.00 - $64.00

Show Type: Drama

Box Office: 626-356-3100

www.anoisewithin.org

A Noise Within Seating Chart

The Dance of Death Reviews

Average Rating based on 4 reviews

Highly Recommended
Recommended
Somewhat Recommended
Not Recommended

Los Angeles Times - Somewhat Recommended

"...The problem with his acting - and this pertains also to Angelo's - is that it strives for a relaxed naturalness that often seems artificial. Instead of rising to meet Strindberg's tragi-comic style, he opts to make his character appealingly relatable for contemporary theatergoers. Johnson is more successful at locating the playwright's bracingly mercurial tone. But the world of the play - a cutoff artistic universe all its own - never feels fully authentic."

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- Charles McNulty

LA Weekly - Recommended

"...Johnson's straight-man transit from vulnerability to full psychic fracture proves an effective springboard for Angelo and Elliott to reach the play's grim register of mordant comedy. With a more rigorously anchored staging, directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott might also have sharpened those laughs with a keener edge of Strindbergian despair."

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- Bill Raden

StageHappenings.com - Recommended

"...Co-artistic directors Geoff and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott join in creating a taut production that continually surprises, always keeping an audience off-balance while subtly moving this dance forward through shifting sands of blame and revelation. The apex of power between a torturous married couple played by Geoff Elliott and Susan Angelo shifts with each new revelation."

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- Michael Van Duzer

Cultural Weekly - Recommended

"...Strindbeg puts in rare appearances on modern stages, probably because the extant translations of his plays are a bit musty and the plays, like the climate of his native Sweden, are angry and unforgiving. But the choice by ANW of The Dance of Death, in a more naturalistic and more recent translation by Conor McPherson, is a surprisingly good one. It is staged here by ANW Artistic Co-Directors Geoff Elliott and Julia Rodriguez-Elliott, and does not so much soften this scorched earth battle of the sexes as punch up the humor in the ferocity of the relationship. (Isn't all marital Punch & Judy ultimately laughable?)"

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- Sylvie Drake

The Dance of Death at A Noise Within