Motherly Love & Pariah & The First Warning

"[The Gate Theatre has] really come up trumps with these three little known Strindberg one-acters that provide a surprising perspective on the raw autobiographical material so relentlessly explored in his major plays by the theatre's most celebrated paranoiac. Easily the most absorbing is Motherly Love, an uncharacteristically restrained and balanced study of moral blackmail and deceit where a young actress on holiday with her mother discovers the truth about her father's identity. Pariah, performed here in a crisp new translation by Eivor Martinus, offers a more discursive treatment of crime and responsibility, but First Warning is a revelation: a comedy, no less, studded with self-mocking irony, centred on a husband's jealousy of his flirtatious wife ... All three productions are honest and uncomplicated. See them and be amazed" ~ Malcolm Hay, Time Out

"All Strindberg's themes are here: the spiritual claustrophobia of family life; the sense of split personalities; the bizarre trials of strength between hostile alter egos; the obsession with mannish women and weak men, with coarseness and nobility" ~ John Peter, The Sunday Times

"...they make for a beguilingly diverse evening... [Pariah is] a gripping piece of visceral theatre..." ~ Michael Billington, The Guardian