August Strindberg - The Chamber Plays - Thunder in the Air & After the Fire & The Ghost Sonata & The Pelican & The Black Glove

In these minature 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 family secrets ...

" ... this world of delusions, guilt, suffering and death, the world of constant changes, disappointments and pain," as the Student of The Ghost Sonata declaims

256 pages

"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