

Still, Scenes is beautifully executed and filled with shockingly honest moments. And since the frame is so tightly focused on people, it excludes much detail about the protagonist’s jobs or social standing. If the cast were any less brilliant, Bergman’s histrionics and navel-gazing might grow tedious (the final 20 minutes drag a bit). It’s a slow and exhaustive event, clocking in at three and a half hours (including a 30-minute intermission). The conceit is that even monogamy has a polygamous aspect to it: As our personalities warp or weaken, our partners stop sleeping with the person who was “us.” Here, the three pairs of ex-lovers occupy the same public space, speaking chorally and swapping partners. But it’s the patient, probing confrontation of each fear and desire that is so rich and relatable.Īfter intermission, Van Hove and his miracle-working designer Jan Versweyveld usher us into a large, amphitheater-style space to watch the fallout of Johan and Marianne’s dissolution: recrimination, divorce papers, pre-breakup sex and, yes, more high-decibel fighting.

The root causes of the breakup are not terribly exotic-boredom in the bedroom, bourgeois routines and the yearning for fresh flesh. Sandwiched in the middle is a sequence in which Roberts and Ruff perform and agonizing dance of sexual malaise and emotional sabotage. Or you may begin at the end, where Howard’s weathered and frustrated Johan tells Benko’s frostily detached Marianne that he’s found someone else. You may start in early days, where twentyish Marianne and Johan host a dinner party ruined by their married friends’ acrimony (foreshadowing!). Played at gradated age ranges by three pairs of actors-young (Susannah Flood, Alex Hurt), thirtyish (Roslyn Ruff, Dallas Roberts) and middle-aged (Tina Benko, Arliss Howard)-the couple is observed in three discrete rooms that divided groups of audience members cycle through. Now Ivo van Hove, no stranger to repurposing film scripts for the stage ( Opening Night) uses the Bergman screenplay, translated by Emily Mann, as a blueprint for this ingenious theatrical excavation.
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His claustrophobic dissection of a disintegrating household was edited to movie length later the same year. The world first met this superficially content twosome back in 1973, when filmmaker Ingmar Bergman unveiled a five-hour miniseries called Scenes from a Marriage. Yet their marriage is model only in the strictest sense-like a shop dummy: chic but dead inside.

They have a stylish Scandi home and two beloved daughters. Unions don’t come more perfect than the one between Marianne and Johan: She’s a smart, successful lawyer, and he’s a literature professor and poet. Scenes from a Marriage: Theater review by David Cote The English text is by Emily Mann the cast includes Tina Benko, Dallas Roberts, Arliss Howard and Roslyn Ruff. One intermission.įlemish stage provocateur Ivo van Hove returns to his regular deconstructing grounds, New York Theatre Workshop, with an adaptation of Ingmar Bergman's 1973 miniseries about a slowly crumbling relationship. New York Theatre Workshop (see Off Broadway). For living descendants please join as a collaborator.Scenes from a Marriage. Please add any profiles of their descendants to this project. xxNS is working on the descendants of Susannah. A working group is working on updating each section of the family tree. The 9th family reunion of the descendants of Charles CROSS and Rose FLOOD has been planned for 2010. Susannah was born in Australia.Īnthony RICHARDSON was a convict and arrived in Australia on the "Surprise" Richard Lionel ROSE was a convict and arrived in Australia on the "Bellona" Susannah CROSS is the daughter of Charles CROSS and Rose FLOOD who arrived in Australia on board the "Neptune". Susannah CROSS married Anthony RICHARDSON and then Richard Lionel ROSE
