Synopses & Reviews
This much overdue new cycle of translations of Strindberg's work has been specially commissioned by Oberon Books. Volumes two, three and four will follow in 1999/2000.
Synopsis
Includes the plays Miss Julie, The Father, The Comrades and Creditors
Miss Julie is Strindberg's best known play, a naturalistic drama about an affair which involves a brutal struggle for ascendancy between the two sexes and two classes. The Father, an almost entirely one-sided rage against the power of women over men, is also a plea for the feminine side of a man's nature. The Comrades portrays artists living in Paris in what they consider to be a modern 'bohemian' marriage. In Creditors, Strindberg is in rare comic form, describing how a woman's ex-husband gains her new husband's confidences, only to destroy him and his faith in his wife in one afternoon.
Cast sizes are 3+, 8, 3, and 11 respectively.
About the Author
August Strindberg (1849-1912) is best-known for his misogyny and as the author of Miss Julie (1889). His first success came as a novelist and autobiographer. His plays (and he wrote over sixty) were deeply controversial in their time and still are to some extent. They range form bold naturalism (e.g. The father, 1887) to an entralling expressionism (e.g. The Ghost Sonata, 1907).