A Dream Play at NIDA

Caryl Churchill's adaptation of Strindberg's A Dream Play at NIDA.

Once again a thoroughly professional performance by the cast on yet another inventive stage although I must say the play hasn't aged like great whiskey, appearing a bit jaded and wild at times.

Hundred years back, this was a definitive theatrical break with realism through expressionist extravaganza but in 2015, most of it appeared plotted, overdone and somewhat preachy. I haven't read Churchill's rewriting but wonder what she added to it. I had expected that her own theatrical minimalism would work as an interestingly contemporary foil to Strindberg's expansive theatrics but don't think it worked out like that.

On the positive side was once again the utilisation of the stage space. In a play in which a divine figure descends from the heavens to inspect human life on earth, the constant use of the vertical axis to string down props and elaborate scenographic structures, apart from evoking the metaphorical framework of human puppetry was also connotative of a complex interweaving of the transcendental and the immanent.