tribades2 What do we take away from watching Cal Rep’s current production of The Night of the Tribades? Aside from learning from context that “tribade” is synonymous with “lesbian,” not much.

Okay, that’s sarcastic overstatement. We do learn that August Strindberg—the Swedish playwright, novelist, and essayist who is the lead character in this play—is a warped, egocentric misogynist. But for anybody who knows anything about Strindberg going in, this is old news.

Cal Rep is a fantastic theatre company, and over the years they have chosen some fantastic scripts (e.g., Melissa James Gibson’s Current Nobody and their recent adaptation of Clifford Odets’ Waiting for Lefty). So I find myself especially puzzled and disappointed when they choose something not up to the very high bar they have set.[i]

The Night of the Tribades is Per Olov Enquist’s psychological staging of an 1889 Copenhagen rehearsal of The Stronger, a quartre d’heure play by Strindberg (played here by John Prosky) starring his ex-wife, Siri (Sarah Underwood), and her sometime lover Marie (Linda Castro). Except as a bit of biopic for the stage, I’m not certain that the script has any compelling substance.

 Art that is foremostly biography works only if you have some real interest in the subject. If you don’t, it had better cook up some aesthetic or emotional sustenance; otherwise, the audience goes hungry. Enquist’s script fails to serve this up, instead simply reminding us over and over that this is August Strindberg.[ii] I wouldn’t be surprised if his name is pronounced more than 50 times. If ever you find yourself playing a drinking game that requires viewing The Night of the Tribades and imbibing every time “Strindberg” is uttered, choose light beer as your participatory beverage.

Strindberg is a prick (played with perfect pitch by Prosky), and since he is far and away our access point—the play is almost exclusively exploration and exposition of his demon-plagued life and psyche (and to be sure, for him, women—particularly Siri and Marie—were somewhat demonic)—our only hope for emotional connection is through the women.[iii] But that connection never really comes.

This is no fault of the actors. We understand that Marie is an emancipated spirit only through exposition; Enquist has given Castro little chance to show it. And although Siri gives Underwood a few chances to fulminate, while the actor is convincing, the character isn’t.

The play’s most enjoyable moments come during their most incongruous: comic relief that isn’t relieving at all. The prime example of this is a digression between Strindberg and Shiwe concerning the measurement of penis size. Suddenly we’re into verbal slapstick—something seemingly of a different play altogether.

“This play seems strange,” observes Marie, “as if everything important exists outside the script.” She’s talking about The Stronger, but she might as well be talking about The Night of the Tribades. Thus is it apropos that by play’s end we are no nearer an answer to an earlier question she asks of Strindberg: “Why this volcanic outburst, as if otherwise you would not be a man?” We know he’s a prick, we know he’s a misogynist, but beyond a brief psychical dig unearthing Strindberg’s fears of becoming obsolete as both a “man” (hence his particular revilement of lesbianism) and as an artist, we don’t have a clue.

And I’m not sure we care. Perhaps, partly because Enquist is, like Strindberg, a Swedish playwright, the latter occupies such a prominent place in the former’s psyche that any exploration of Strindberg is worthwhile.

I just don’t know where that leaves the rest of us.

 THE NIGHT OF THE TRIBADES CALIFORNIA REPERTORY CO. • THE ROYAL THEATRE ABOARD THE QUEEN MARY (1126 QUEENS HWY) • LONG BEACH 90802 • 562.985.5526 CALREP.ORG • TUES-FRI 8PM, SAT 2PM + 8PM; NO PERFORMANCES UNTIL NOV 30 • $15–$20 (PARKING $6–$8—BUT YOU CAN TAKE THE PASSPORT FOR FREE) • THROUGH DEC 11

[i] Speaking of ‘set,’ Jeffery Eisenmann has designed a beautiful one, which I mention here because in the flow of the review I never get/got to it, but it deserves mention.

[ii] There’s even a minor character, a photographer, whose sole function is to remind us of Strindberg’s importance by being present to photograph cast and playwright for posterity.

[iii] Aside from the photographer, there is only one other character, Shiwe (amusingly played by Craig Anton), but he’s relegated to this footnote because he’s little more than persona ex machina, on stage only so that Strindberg has a target at which to voice what are basically asides. In the universe of the play supposedly he has a role in The Stronger, but the script of The Stronger lists only the two female characters, so….