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Strindberg & The Chamber Plays

  • Strindberg's Biography
  • The Intimate Theater
  • Production Blog
  • The Director Speaks
  • The Translator Speaks
  • Production Team
  • Storm
  • Burned House
  • The Ghost Sonata
  • The Pelican
  • The Black Glove

Further Studies

  • Essays and Articles
  • Translation Comparisons
  • Ask the Artists
  • Music from The Chamber Plays
The Ghost
Sonata
1908
  • Synopsis
  • Characters
  • Production History

  • Artist Interviews
  • The Cast
  • Reviews
  • Full Video

Critic Reviews

10.25.2012
Jean Schiffman, The Examiner

“[Strindberg Cycle is] off to a solid start with “The Ghost Sonata.” [Paul] Walsh’s translation feels smooth and fluid, and Rob Melrose directs the melodramatic and at times symbolic material in a style somewhere between… Read more »

10.25.2012
Sam Hurwitt, Marin Independent Journal

“San Francisco’s Cutting Ball Theater is doing a remarkable thing.” “The Ghost Sonata” is…thoroughly compelling…often surreal and dreamlike, with several long, poetic speeches, it’s given great immediacy and emotional gravity by Melrose’s sharp staging and… Read more »

10.23.2012
Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian

“…the chamber plays are works of a new era, and for a new era, and The Ghost Sonata… As darkly shadowed as The Ghost Sonata is, its formal invention is full of air and light to remake the stage… Read more »

10.22.2012
Rob Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle

“[Strindberg Cycle is] a big project for any theater company. In one of the few American contributions to the international centennial of Strindberg’s death, Artistic Director Rob Melrose is staging all five of the seminal… Read more »

10.22.2012
Chad Jones, Theater Dogs

“Watching August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata at Cutting Ball Theater, it becomes clear that without Strindberg, we probably would not have the wonderfully weird worlds of Samuel Beckett or Harold Pinter or Edward Albee or, in the… Read more »

Public Reviews

An artist's rendition of
JAMES CARPENTER from The Chamber Plays

Mouse over the icons below to learn about each play.

Storm (1907) at-a-glance

In Storm, an elderly gentleman's peace is shattered when his ex-wife becomes his new upstairs neighbor.

"How do they expect me to steer with so many passions blowing! I can't ease their suffering or change their course."
—The Gentleman, Storm

Burned House (1907) at-a-glance

In Burned House, prodigal son Arvid returns to his hometown to find that his childhood home burned down the night before. Arvid sifts through the ashes to uncover the dark secrets hidden by his family and the town.

"Suffering leads to patience; patience provides experience; experience leads to hope; and hope doesn't allow itself to be shamed."
—The Stranger, Burned House

The Ghost Sonata (1908) at-a-glance

The Ghost Sonata tells the story of a strange encounter between a student and an old man and begins the morning after a terrible fire. A "ghost supper" is shared in a round room, secrets are divulged, plots are foiled, and illusions are shattered.

"There is poison that takes away sight and poison that opens the eyes—I must have been born with the latter for I can't see the ugly as beautiful nor call evil goodness."
—The Student, The Ghost Sonata

The Pelican (1907) at-a-glance

Based on the myth that a pelican sheds its own blood to feed its young, The Pelican presents a family where the opposite is true. The widow Elise plots with her lover to steal her children's inheritance while they astarve in their own home, but the truth sparks a small revolution.

"If I could only do the evil I want to do, you would cease to exist. Why is it so hard to do evil? When I lift my hand against you, I only strike myself..."
—Gerda, The Pelican

The Black Glove (1911) at-a-glance

In The Black Glove, a lost black glove found in the entry way to a large apartment building the day before Christmas Eve mystically passes through the hands of many of its residents as it bestows a Christmas spirit.

"A few harvests still you can bring in.
And though you won't yourself enjoy the fruit,
You can give it all away.
For it's more blessed to give than to receive,
And sacrifice makes us happy&mdash."
—The Tomte, The Black Glove

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