August Strindberg Repertory Theatre will emphasize the comedy in a remaking of August Strindberg's "Crimes and Crimes," to be presenTed August 6 to 20 at Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond Street. The company's Associate Artistic Director, Whitney Aronson, is preparing a radical refashioning of the script to bring out the humor that underlies a play that is mostly known as an impressionistic study of thought.
Strindberg's original "strange comedy" is set in a Paris of the mind, not the city of actuality. A playwright named Maurice, after years of struggle, is expecting success from a drama about to be produced. But on the evening of his victory, in a fit of wild passion, he abandons his mistress and her child to take up with the mistress of a friend. The child dies and he accuses his new mistress of committing murder, while he himself is looked upon by the law as the probable criminal. This new adaptation will offer a new, lighter take on the story, modernizing the location and setting to contemporary New York and heightening the absurdity by making the human child a treasured champion show dog.
The play, "Brott och Brott" (There are Crimes and Crimes) recalls, but afar off, the style of Strindberg's middle period. It was first published in 1899 with "Advent" under the general title, "On a Higher Court." In these plays, Strindberg's theme of justice was caught up with his religious trend, which was already manifest in his 1892 play, "The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven." Interestingly, Strindberg preferred the title "Intoxication." Its Parisian atmosphere, well-delineated secondary characters and subtle mixture of symbolism and realism add richness to the piece.
The dark humor of some of its scenes have traditionally justified labeling the play a comedy, but that's not enough for Director Whitney Aronson, who is condensing play in order to release more of its comedic potential. She says, "Strindberg is actually very funny in many plays, but his humor tends to get put into contexts that contemporary audiences can't relate to. Between the archaic language of most translations and the period costumes, much humor gets lost. This happens in Chekhov, too. Then there's the problem that Strindberg was discovering and changing the parts as he wrote them. He would often get intoxicated by his own beautiful language. For our contemporary attention spans, he takes too long to get to the point of things, to get to the action." So in her adaptation, she is making a "tightened, cherry-picked, abridged version" of the play, streamlined to make the story clear and allow the comedy to come through. Having changed the mistress' child into a show dog, she is is casting the animal with a woman in a dog suit. Since the pooch is supposed to be a Komondor -- a Hungarian sheepdog with a long, corded coat -- the costume will be made of cotton string mops.
In the close of the original play, is it discovered that the child had died naturally, with the consequence that Maurice is relieved of the nightmare into which he had sunk. The drama then becomes a kind of impressionistic study of thought with an ironic conclusion, in which Maurice agrees to divide his life between prayer and acceptance of the worldly joys now restored to him. In Aronson's adaptation, the religious content will be downplayed. Even so, she feels, Strindberg's essential themes will be preserved. She says, "You don't need to get religious or find God in order to discover there are consequences for being a bad person, and you don't need religion to have a conscience. The driving force is his understanding that in this life, you need to do right by yourself and the people around you: that will lead to a more fulfilling existence."
Interestingly, Aronson did not change the child to a dog for comic effect, but for believability. She writes, "I actually did it because in the original, the child dies and nobody REALLY cares. Within hours of being exonerated, Maurice is happily choosing between going to church and attending his now successful play. I thought that the audience would not be able to forgive anyone in the play for so easily moving on from the death of a human child. A treasured animal's death, though tragic and upsetting, is more consistent with the general reaction and behavior that Strindberg's characters demonstrate."
Set design is by Dan Krause. Lighting design is by
Jason Fok. Costume design is by Matthew Hampton, assisted by Holly Albracht. Sound design is by
Andy Evan Cohen. Jessa-Raye Court is Executive Producer.
Robert Greer is Producing Artistic Director.
Randall Rodriguez will play Maurice, the playwright. He recently appeared in "A Light in the Dark" by Wendy Mae at Planet Connections, "The Real Machiavelli" by
Monica Bauer atStage Left Studios and "The Mixtape" by Steve McMahon for Nylon Fusion, where he is a company member. For
August Strindberg Rep, he played Caesar in "To Damascus Part II" last February. A former Sergeant in the U.S. Army's Airborn Rangers, he plays he plays a World War II soldier in the independent film "Addle Strife," which will be released later this year. He graduated from Rutgers' Mason Gross School of the Arts with a BFA in Acting and attended Shakespeare's Globe Theater in London, where he received a Certificate of Distinction with Honors in Stage Combat.
As of this writing, casting for the ensemble (including the dog) is unfinished.
Director Whitney Gail Aronson is Associate Artistic Director of
August Strindberg Rep, where she has has staged four of Strindberg's plays: "Burnt House," "Dance of Death," a stage reading of "Gustav Adolf," and "Kristina" (1903), the history play upon which the Garbo film "Queen Christina" was based. She holds an MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama.
