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"A dramatic masterpiece…a profound exploration of existential futility." —The Times
A plague rages across Europe. On a remote island, former actress Alice and army Captain Edgar are quarantined together–locked in a bitter, brutal, and addictive marriage. When an old friend arrives to help celebrate their wedding anniversary, it’s the perfect excuse for the couple to take their terrifying games to a new level.
August Strindberg’s masterpiece Dance of Death is a darkly comic portrait of psychological warfare–a toxic love story that continues to thrill audiences today.
"Richard Eyre's candescent adaptation brings comedy and tenderness alongside Strindberg's savagery…a terrible tango to the death but one which brings a rare and captivating pathos."
—Guardian
"An intense, bitter and often funny triumph…electrifying."
—London Standard
"Imagine a gloomy, Nordic middle-aged version of Love Island in which the couple bond because they loathe everyone on the island, especially each other…Eyre's sweary, funny adaptation makes the most of the biting humour."
—Time Out
"A grim vision of human relationships and it is to…Brilliant but bleakly so."
—WhatsOnStage
"A stripped-down version that crackles with cruel wit…Eyre's version waltzes through the story's increasingly shocking turns at a rattling pace, stripping out superfluous characters while leaning into the play's utterly bleak humour."
—The Stage
"A grotesque dance of power play…it's not pretty but it is quite delicious."
—BroadwayWorld
"Before the lacerating spats of Albee's Martha and George, and the circular kvetching of Beckett's characters, there were August Strindberg's pioneering excursions into dark psychological truths…Richard Eyre's achievement is to make the piece relatable."
—Arts Desk
"A deeply thoughtful, intelligent and invigorating take on the text…quite remarkable."
—West End Best Friend
Richard Eyre is a theatre director, writer, and former artistic director of the National Theatre (a position he held from 1988 to 1997). He worked for ten years in regional theatre in Leicester, Edinburgh, and Nottingham, and then became producer of BBC TV’s Play for Today. In London, his theatre work as an adapter includes his versions of Jennifer Dawson’s novel The Ha Ha, Sartre’s Les Mains Sales, and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and Ghosts at the Almeida Theatre and the West End. His original play, The Snail House, was staged at Hampstead Theatre in 2022. What follows is a selection of directorial credits: for the National Theatre, Guys and Dolls, Hamlet, King Lear, Sweet Bird of Youth, John Gabriel Borkman, and Liolà. For the West End, Marry Poppins, The Last Cigarette, Mr. Foote’s Other Leg, and The Pajama Game. And on Broadway, The Crucible and Private Lives. His opera work includes La traviata at the Royal Opera House; Manon Lescaut at the Baden-Baden Festspielhaus; Carmen, Werther, and Le nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera.
His film and television work includes The Imitation Game, Tumbledown, The Ploughman’s Lunch, Iris, Notes on a Scandal, and Changing Stages (a six-part look at twentieth-century theatre which he wrote and presented), among others. He has published several books, including National Service, a journal of his time at the National Theatre, which won the Theatre Book Prize; and What Do I Know?, a collection of essays about people, politics, and the arts. He has received many awards for theatre, television and film, was knighted in 1997, and became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2011.
August Strindberg (1849-1912) was a Swedish playwright, novelist, poet, essayist, and painter. His plays include The Father (1887), Miss Julie (1888), The Dance of Death (1900), A Dream Play (1902), and The Ghost Sonata (1908).