August Strindberg
The Chamber Plays
translated by Eivor Martinus

In these miniature masterpieces you will find the characteristic Strindbergian themes: the cynicism of old age set against the innocence of youth, marital infidelity, betrayal, loss and dark secrets...

“Eivor Martinus's translations beautifully capture the colloquial grace and the ritualism that fuse so remarkably in the original. This is especially true in the case of The Ghost Sonata. The translator also supplies an illuminating introduction which draws on her long practical experience of these challenging works.”
~ Paul Binding, Times Literary Supplement, 19 Nov. 2004

Thunder in the Air - Gate Theatre, London, 1989 (Cast 3m, 3f)

“Strindberg’s earliest chamber play has been given a fresh lease of life by Eivor Martinus’ new translation.”
~ Khalid Omer Javed, What’s On

“Eivor Martinus’s translation ... captures exactly the haunting, low-key moodiness of a play that sets the pattern for much 20th-century drama and that takes us deep into ‘the abyss we call the human heart.’.”
~ Michael Billington, The Guardian

“...suffused with eerie symbolism and veiled meanings ... quiet and melancholic, it suggests throughout the abyss of hate and recrimination from which Strindberg never strayed far ... Strindberg’s treatment makes poetry out of everyday griefs ... perhaps at last Strindberg has found a place on the British stage.”
~ Rupert Smith, Time Out

The Pelican - Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond, 1994 (Cast 2m,2f)

“...it drags Aeschylean horrors into the Swedish drawing room as a brother and sister, starved of food and love, perish in the healing warmth of a domestic blaze while their tyrannical mother flings herself from the window to her death. ...a supple translation by Eivor Martinus brings us close to the naturalism of the original.”
~ (John Thaxter, The Stage and Television Today)

“[The players] keep the absorbing, horrid surprises of Strindberg’s drama unfolding freshly. ...the new translation, very effective, is by Eivor Martinus ...the play ... holds its audience’s attention with easy command.”
~ (Alastair Macaulay, Financial Times)

“This is a dauntingly up-to-date play about child abuse and family dysfunction ... both the powerful emotion and the subtle undercurrents are excellently conveyed...”
~ (Robert Hanks, The Independent)

Other first production dates:

After the Fire - Here Theatre, New York, 2000 (Cast 7m,3f)
The Ghost Sonata - Here Theatre, New York, 2000 (Cast 7m,7f)
The Black Glove - Chelsea Centre Theatre, London, 1992 (Cast 2+m, 4+f)

August Strindberg
The Father / Lady Julie / Playing With Fire
translated by Eivor Martinus

The Father (1887) is one of the most gripping psychological dramas of the modern theatre. Strindberg was working on this and Lady Julie (1888) when his first marriage was breaking up, and he wrote Playing With Fire (1892) when the couple were battling in court over the custody of their children. The dramatic conflict in all three plays is fuelled by sexual tension and typifies Strindberg's enduring theme: the constant and consuming battle for power between the sexes.

“This excellent production of the Strindberg play (which normally trades as Miss Julie) has been newly translated by Eivor Martinus, essentially to make it more sexy - or as the programme notes put it, ‘expose the usual reticence of English translations and faithfully reveal the brutal language and imagery of Strindberg’s original.’ ... Highly recommended.”
~ Jane Langdon-Davies, What’s On

“Eivor Martinus [conveys] beautifully the powerful imagery of Strindberg’s language and the intense passion and tragedy of a thoroughly gender- and class-bound society.”
~ Emma Wright, Tribune

“Eivor Martinus' translation is at once more free-flowing and more sexually charged, closer to reproducing the mystical and erotic ferments in which Strindberg's work is so often steeped.”
~ Ian Shuttleworth, City Limits

August Strindberg
The Great Highway
translated by Eivor Martinus

This is Strindberg's last play, an unrecognised masterpiece written in 1909 when he was sixty years old. The seven scenes of the play may be regarded as representing seven stations to the grave or seven aspects of life as seen through the eyes of a dying man. An innovative psycho-spiritual pilgrimage with strong elements of the surreal, the play contains examples of the very first absurdist theatre in Europe. (Cast 6m, 2f, I child)

August Strindberg
Motherly Love / Pariah / The First Warning
translated by Eivor Martinus

Motherly Love (cast 4f), Pariah (cast 2m) and The First Warning (cast 1m, 4f) are part of a series of nine one-act plays that Strindberg wrote for his own small touring company.

“[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)