State Of Unrest Theatre Company's new season features two of Strindberg's lesser-known works,
Many years ago I did a play in the West End by Alan Bennett called Getting On at the Queens Theatre. It sounds extraordinary now, I don't know how we found the energy, but three of us in the company - myself, Brian Cox and Sebastian Graham-Jones - were getting a little bit bored so we got this small one-act play together called Creditors. We used to run from our stage door at the Queens up to the Open Space Theatre, a tiny space in a basement on Tottenham Court Road which was then run by Thelma Holt, and did this play late night for about two weeks. It was a big success and I remember it with great affection.
Creditors is about a husband, a wife and a lover, and is full of Strindbergian angst, breast-beating and hair-pulling - a jolly good way to get your rocks off. They are wonderful acting parts so I am surprised it's not done more often. As for Pariah, I don't know it so it's rather exciting that State Of Unrest are putting it on.
One of the other reasons I'm interested in these productions is they were translated by Michael Meyer, who did the translation of the Creditors that I originally appeared in. He also did a splendid translation for The Dance Of Death, which I did at the Almeida a couple of years ago. This season was going to be honouring him anyway, because he'd reached a good age and then sadly he suddenly died just before rehearsals started, which was a great shock. As well as being a very nice man he was a hugely talented translator with an ability to produce translations that were both very "actorable" and yet so true to the original that even scholars approved.
