Sydney Festival Digital Archive

The Dance of Death by August Strindberg (2004)

Hatred is the glue in August Strindberg’s classic drama The Dance of Death and it bonded with Gorilla Grip intensity in this blistering production of the play starring Ian McKellen – stratospherically famous at the time after Lord of the Rings – and stage legend Frances de la Tour.

Marking McKellen’s Australian stage debut, this production (which had opened in London the year before) leaned hard into the play’s proto-Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? brutality: insults cracked like gunfire; affection curdled into psychological warfare. It was mesmerising, merciless theatre.