Belvoir Presents THE DANCE OF DEATH

Two time Academy Award® nominee and Australian theatrical legend, Judy Davis, returns to Belvoir to direct August Strindberg's The Dance Of Death, with an impeccable cast of Colin Friels, Pamela Rabe and Toby Schmitz.

With a bitter and brutal marriage at its centre, The Dance of Death centers on a couple who loathe each other, and have done for 25 years. Their mutual antipathy, as hilarious as it is morbid, has driven away friends and family leaving the pair isolated on an island without society or sanity. Strinberg's Dance of Death is unnervingly funny and wickedly dark - Edgar and Alice make George and Martha look like Romeo and Juliet!

Edgar has started having heart problems. Alice plays the piano as her husband dances despite himself. A dance Alice hopes will stop Edgar's heart before he makes good on his threats to cut her from his will. Into this duet of recrimination and resentment comes Kurt, Alice's younger cousin. Kurt has his own hatred for Edgar and joins forces with Alice to plot against him. And so the dance hastens, a white-hot whirl around the darkest corners of the human soul.

One of the blackest comedies of the 20th Century, The Dance Of Death has influenced countless writers in their examination of human relationships.

Belvior's Artistic Director, Eamon Flack, says of this production of Dance of Death, "Judy Davis and her team have spent over a year dreaming up a wild, visceral production of what is an awfully funny play. Stringberg's play has a can't-look-away quality. It gets the heart going. Brian Thompson's set turns Belvoir into a kind of marital abattoir, which is entirely appropriate. And to top it all off this is a formidable cast - three of the country's very best. It shouldn't be funny or entertaining but it's absolutely both. It's pure theatrical pleasure."

Tickets: https://belvoir.com.au/productions/the-dance-of-death/ or (02) 9699 3444