Take away a man's last vestige of pride and identity, Strindberg seems to say, and you drive him headlong into madness. Such is the direct thematic line of The Father, a psychodrama that still shocks and agitates nearly 110 years after its first publication. Beset by the women in his house, each of whom has a different approach to raising his daughter, Captain Adolf finds solace in the male hierarchy of his military duties. These commiserations help steady his nerves until wife Laura (Gail Strickland), who might be described as an iron-balled version of Ibsen's Nora, plants a seed of doubt in his mind as to who is the real father of teenage Bertha (Angela Bettis). For the rest of the play, Laura will protest that she's innocent of adultery, and that the girl is indeed of her husband's blood, but by then the canker has burst in his brain, leaving Adolf a raving, bitter lunatic, comforted by motherly love but wildly paranoid about any other womanly trait. Though it's clear Laura has been plotting against her mate (intercepting his mail, cautioning Adolf's colleagues on his waning sanity), Strindberg also leaves the possibility open that Laura has had reason to question the Captain's soundness for longer than we, the audience, have been allowed to witness. To that end, Gail Strickland, a brittle and spinsterly Laura, does make the wife more than an evil manipulatrix. On the other hand, the actress' hiccupy speaking patterns (like Katharine Hepburn at 45rpm) are so irksome, she drives us nuts long before Laura does the same to her Captain.
Supporting players in Clifford Williams' straightforward production (he took over from Robert Falls) prove a mixed lot, with Tom Beckett's sheepdoggy doctor less than compelling and Irene Dailey's Old Margaret all too much like the blithering Nursie from "Blackadder." Angela Bettis, however, makes a persuasively girlish Bertha; it hurts to see her victimized by her parents' battle and the mad Captain's violent temper. Which brings us to Frank Langella, whose stunning performance is the reason to hurry to the Roundabout. Although his switch from in-control leader to twitchy paranoiac comes a little quick between acts one and two -- a function of there being no break between them -- Langella's mania snowballs convincingly. We can almost picture him physically retreating behind a fog of doubt, unable to see reason, unwilling to reach back to the clear world (a world of converging grayness in John Lee Beatty's excellent, vertigo-inducing set). When the Captain ends the war with a broken, "I lay down my sword," the metaphor is as unmistakable as the horror.
