A Dream Play (NHB Classic Plays)

August Strindberg

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780014289
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Caryl Churchill's spare and resonant version of Strindberg's enigmatic masterpiece.

Written in 1901, a mysterious amalgam of Freud, Alice in Wonderland and Strindberg's own private symbolism, A Dream Play follows the logic of a dream:

A young woman comes from another world to see if life is really as difficult as people make it out to be. Characters merge into each other, locations change in an instant and a locked door becomes an obsessive recurrent image. As Strindberg wrote in his preface, he wanted 'to imitate the disjointed yet seemingly logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist.'

From a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund. Introduction by Caryl Churchill.

'elegant yet funereal and, like dreams, paradoxically serene and fraught'- Independent on Sunday

'100 minutes of disconcerting theatrical brilliance... spellbinding'- Daily Telegraph

1. Outside the Tower

Huge hollyhocks.

A tower with a flower bud on top.

AGNES and GLAZIER.

AGNES	Look how the tower’s grown.
GLAZIER	What tower?
AGNES	It’s twice the size it was last year.
GLAZIER	Yes of course, it must be the fertiliser.
AGNES	But shouldn’t it be flowering by now?
GLAZIER	Can’t you see the flower?
AGNES	Yes, yes, I see it. Do you know who lives in the tower?
GLAZIER	I do but I can’t remember.
AGNES	I think it’s a prisoner. And I think he’s waiting for me to set him free. Let’s go in.

2. Room inside the Tower

AGNES, GLAZIER, OFFICER.

OFFICER is rocking his chair and hitting the table with his sword.

AGNES	(Takes the sword.) Don’t. Don’t.
OFFICER	Please, Agnes, let me keep my sword.
AGNES	You’re hacking the table. (To GLAZIER.) Go down to the tack room and mend the window and I’ll see you later.
	GLAZIER goes.
	You’re a prisoner and I’ve come to set you free.
OFFICER	It’s what I’ve been waiting for. But I wasn’t sure you wanted to.
AGNES	Do you want to?
OFFICER	I don’t know. I’ll be miserable either way. It’s terrible sitting here but it’s going to be so painful being free. Agnes, I’d rather stay here if I can go on seeing you.
AGNES	What do you see?
OFFICER	I look at you and it’s something to do with the stars and the smallest particles, you’re somehow connected.
AGNES	But so are you.
OFFICER	Then why do I have to muck out the horses?
AGNES	To make you long to get away.
OFFICER	I do but it’s such an effort.
AGNES	It’s your duty to seek freedom in the light.
OFFICER	To be free is a duty?
AGNES	Your duty to life.
OFFICER	Life doesn’t do its duty to me so why should I?
	AGNES, OFFICER, FATHER, MOTHER.
	MOTHER is working on shirts at a table.
	FATHER gives MOTHER a silk dress.
FATHER	You don’t want it?
MOTHER	What’s the point when I’m dying?
FATHER	You believe the doctor?
MOTHER	I believe how I feel.
FATHER	Then it is serious? And all you think about is how it affects the children....