Strindberg's "The Father"

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Category
Entertainment
Start date
2018-11-15 18:30:00
End date
2018-12-01 14:00:00
Address / City
Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond street New York
Location
NY, US
In this tragedy by Swedish playwright August Strindberg, a wife casts doubts as to whether her husband is father of her daughter, in order to maintain control over daughter's academic and religious education. The husband, an army captain, is a scientist and a "free thinker," meaning atheist. He would have daughter educated to be a teacher, while the mother would have her become a painter. The mother manipulates the town Pastor (who happens to be her stepbrother) and the newly arrived town Doctor for her purposes. She uses her erotic influence over the doctor and her readiness to claim that the family lawyer is her child's father to drive her husband into the arms of his old trusted nurse, who straitjackets him.

Conceived before Freud described the Oedipus Complex, this 1887 play offers a proto-Freudian explanation of the unreasonable hatred that can exist between husbands and wives. Depending on the time of history, audiences tend to side with either the captain or his wife. The captain's insistence on "male perogatives" makes it sometimes seem that his wife's scheming brings him his just deserts. At other times, he seems a tragic victim of a diabolical female who, in the course of the play, is even told by the Pastor and the Doctor that she is a monster.
Organizer
Strindberg Rep
Phone
212.868.4444
Email
jsacrew@gmail.com