The Dance of Death

Play something kitty-cat-ish . . . sweet. Imagine I've died and you're galloping through fields. As their thirtieth wedding anniversary approaches, Alice and Edgar are locked in a bitter struggle. They've driven away their children and their friends. Their relationship is sustained by taunts and recriminations. When a newcomer breaks into the midst of the fray, their insular lives threaten to spin out of control. We're all just bodies and when we're dead we're worm food, but as long as your body keep going, flailing or thrashing about, we are duty bound to fight, to scratch and kick, until you're fucked. That's my philosophy. Laced with biting humour, The Dance of Death is August Strindberg's landmark drama about a marriage pushed to its limits, adapted in a thrilling new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz. The Dance of Death opened at the Bath Theatre Royal's Ustinov Theatre in May 2022 before going on UK tour in an Arcola Theatre, Cambridge Arts Theatre, Royal & Derngate, Northampton, Oxford Playhouse and Theatre Royal Bath Productions co-production.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz's plays include The Night Season (National Theatre, Critics' Circle's Most Promising Playwright Award, 2004) and Her Naked Skin (National Theatre, 2008), which was the first play by a living female playwright to be staged on the Olivier stage. Other plays include The Invisible (The Bush), Jane Wenham, Soho, The Painter (Arcola), The Typist (Riverside Studios), The Lioness (Tricycle), That Almost Unnameable Lust, Shoreditch Madonna, Blue Moon over Poplar (Soho Theatre), A Soldier's Tale (Old Vic), Invisible Mountains (National Theatre), Faeries (Royal Opera House), Justitia (Peacock Theatre), and adaptations of Ibsen's Ghosts (Arcola) and James's The Turn of the Screw (Almeida). Film includes Colette, Disobedience and Ida, co-written with Pawel Pawlikowski, which won a BAFTA and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, 2015.