a dream play

Okay, okay. I haven't posted in ages. But it's February, and most of you know how I feel about February; I can be excused, right? Anyway, I went two days ago (with a lovely ragtag group of random friends) to see an adaptation of August Strindberg's A Dream Play that was put on at the Oxford Playhouse, and it's been rattling around in my head ever since.

In the play, God's daughter (or the daughter of a god, as no specific religion seems massively more likely than another) has the Earth hanging in her bedroom as a night-light. She is obsessed with its people: she has acquainted herself with their literature and music to an almost exhaustive degree, but what she cannot understand is how they feel. She begs her cold, distant father--who has clearly stopped caring about the Earth long ago, if he ever cared much--to experience what they experience: to be a human, at least emotionally, for awhile. Her father relents (a good choice, given that the play would be quite boring if he didn't). Agnes descends to the Earth and, predictably, experiences joy and pain and love and death and hunger and lust and sadness. 

We'll get the obvious out of the way: this play is weird. Some of its elements seem jarring simply for the sake of being jarring: its characters behave inconsistently, even for mere mortals. Some of the odd facets are clearly representative: for example, there are characters representing Theology, Philosophy, Science, and Law; these characters have the predictable arguments over superiority and power. Ultimately, Agnes' eventual return to her bedroom--soft white light illuminating her cosy sheets, the Earth suspended harmlessly from the ceiling--is as we have anticipated all along, but somehow it is still a supremely profound moment. Most of the actors were so-so, but enough (perhaps three) were brilliant enough to carry the show. 

At intermission, I was nonplussed: the play, as far as I was concerned, had started off well and then gotten tragically lost in its own multifaceted meanings. 

After the show, I was silent for a moment: the music, the scenery, and one hell of a monologue had all coalesced into a unique experience by the curtain's fall.

But now, two days later, I just quite cheered myself up out of a pretty terrible day simply by remembering the beauty that was this production. 

So we'll go with success. 

In other theatre-related news, I'm seeing Spring Awakening tomorrow, and dear old Brian (whom my avid blog-followers will have seen in photos) is starring. Should be excellent.