Through a Glass Darkly
Almeida, until 31 July
After the Dance
Lyttelton, in rep until 11 August
Ingmar Bergman wrote his first film aged 24. It was called Torment and he continued to entertain audiences in similar vein for the rest of his career. That an artist is easy to satirise is no proof of inadequacy, of course. MC Hammer was easy to laugh at too, and look how brilliant he was. But Bergman is the most austere and humourless of dramatists. He was so dry the ink wouldn’t flow from his pen but spilled out in dusty granules.
Through a Glass Darkly, the only one of his films he permitted to be adapted for the stage, comes from the starchier end of the spectrum. It’s August. We’re on a remote archipelago where a family of high-minded Swedes are having a holiday from hell.
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