Orange Tree Theatre

What else have you seen recently? Very quickly, we might prefer to.

Very quickly, just touch on A Small and Quiet Light at the Orange Tree Theatre by Stephanie Street, directed by Ellen Schofield.

That plays until the 24th of October.

I was really interested in this story.

So what else? Less fringy, Murder in the Cathedral with David Suchet.

Quite excited about that.

A site-specific one in a church over the road from the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond.

That runs till the 7th of November from the 12th of October onwards.

Arthur Miller dubbed Strindberg the mad inventor of modern theater, and echoes of his unflinching dissection of extreme emotional discord can be seen in the plays of Edward Albee, Tennessee Williams, Eugene O'Neill, and John Osborne, while his formal challenge to the decorum of naturalism inspired modernists such as Brecht and Beckett.

So I'm delighted to essay our first Strindberg play for the podcast, inspired by a wonderful new production of Dance of Death that I saw at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond upon Thames earlier this year.

The production was adapted and directed by Sir Richard Eyre, and I'm even more delighted to say that Richard joins me today to guide us through Strindberg's blistering onslaught on marriage.

Welcome, Richard.

This is a really, really extraordinary play.

It's a piece that resonates age after age.

Finally, the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond approached me and said, "Do you have anything?" And I said, "This adaptation of Dance of Death." This is six years after I'd written it.

And Tom Littler said, "Actually, I know a lot about Strindberg.

For this last reason, it is not necessarily an easy play for modern audiences to access, but even without our understanding every nuance of its period comedy, it's hard to resist the preening labours of love on display.

That is especially so as when staged outdoors on a summer's evening in a garden near the Thames in Richmond by the joint talents of the Orange Tree Theatre and the Guildford Shakespeare Company.

I'm delighted, therefore, to be joined to assay Shakespeare's conceited comedy by the esteemed director of this magical production, Tom Littler.

Tom has been the artistic director and joint chief executive of the Orange Street Theatre since 2023, where his directing credits include Twelfth Night, Somerset Mom's The Circle, Churchill in Moscow by Howard Brenton, The Rivals by Sheridan, and Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer.

Um, he closes the laptop, and he heads out the door.

We cut to the Orange Tree Theater, where he is once again whistling backstage trying to get the stage manager's attention, which he does, 'cause he doesn't know her name.

Um, and so she tells him that it's still bad luck, but that's what he wanted to do.

And he tells her that he's there to see her, and he asks her out on a date.