[In the following review, Bruckner comments on the production of The Dance of Death at the Bouwerie Lane Theater, New York, directed by Karen Lordi.]

The Jean Cocteau Repertory company certainly has its mettle tested this year. Its production of Strindberg's Dance of Death recently entered its 2001-2 roster less than six weeks after the closing of a Broadway adaptation with the vastly admired British stars Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren in the leading roles. It's good to see that the Cocteau, using a translation that Strindberg signed off on, was not intimidated by the uptown competition. We can never see too many versions; each reveals something new about how much of 20th-century theater was created in those two hours, first onstage a century ago.

In the shabby elegance of the little Bouwerie Lane Theater, Edgar and Alice, who have dueled to the death through 25 years of marriage, are so close to the seats that audiences must often fear that they will be wiped out by their conflict, just as completely as Alice's cousin and Edgar's old buddy Curt is. He is demolished when he drops into the dungeon of the old castle that is the couple's home on an island that the locals call “little hell.” In this atmosphere every wheeze and whisper burrow into the ear, and Strindberg's mastery of cliche becomes nearly unbearable as Edgar and Alice strip each other of emotional defense and individuality. This was surely the playwright's intention, pursued with intense concentration here by the director, Karen Lordi: the comedy is sophisticated; its characters are not.

But neither are they vulgar. Craig Smith and Elise Stone (members of this company who really are husband and wife) make the uncommonly acute intelligence of Edgar and Alice at once amusing and menacing, and they let us see how that very quickness of wit makes them vulnerable not only to each other but also to the society they loathe and avoid.

Our only glimpse of the world outside is Curt. Jason Crowl makes this crucial but enigmatic character strong enough to play Edgar and Alice off each other briefly, until they gang up on him before he realizes what is happening. And when Curt pities them even as they destroy him, his emotion feels genuine. That is not an easy trick for an actor.

Mr. Smith uses Edgar's histrionics—in everything from his heart seizures to his stuffing all his humiliations into a garbage bag to his attack on the family piano—to unmask gradually a sorrow this old soldier cannot speak of as he discovers, facing death, that life has no more joy than he found, and no purpose he can understand. (The cast list gives no credit to the luxurious black cat with a white muzzle that elicits, for only a moment, a hint of affection from this Edgar. I hope it was Hector, the cat for which this company's occasional late-night comic romps—Club Hector—are named.)

Ms. Stone's Alice can be confident in her scorn only as long as she can ignore the truth. When Curt, made playful by lust, merely suggests that her youthful acting career may have been of no importance, her voice in reply goes guttural; she growls at him. And after an evening of singing hallelujah at the thought of Edgar's dropping dead, when she finally realizes that he is dying, the despair that turns her face blank and freezes her shoulders into a hunch is painful to look at.

The great poet Rilke famously found a profound affirmation of humanity at the end of The Dance of Death, although he could not account for it. At the end of this performance, you cannot deny that a strange peace has settled on you. But the source of this odd sensation remains a mystery, as always. A number of Strindberg's remarks suggest that it mystified him, too.