Robert Wilson's production of Strindberg's surreal drama comes under the umbrella of this year's BITE, which for the last four years has provided the most vital events held in the building. And the theatre was packed. It's hard to believe that anyone has ever cared about the characters or plot of this play, in which the daughter of a god descends to Earth in order to find out whether the moaning of the human race is justified. Wilson's glacial production will not change that. His series of dazzling tableaux amount to an investigation of what makes an experience dreamlike.
Bright lighting drains away warmth and flattens figures so that they look like cardboard cut-outs.
Sounds are exaggerated so that the biting of a piece of bread sounds like an avalanche. Movements are slowed down to underwater walking speed. It's an arresting rather than engaging occa sion, more revealing about Wilson than Strindberg. Chichester's summer season contains some tempting items, but it has opened torpidly. On the Razzle , Tom Stoppard's 1981 farce, based on a nineteenth-century play by the Austrian Johann Nestroy, is a jaunty, mildly disconcerting affair in which masters and servants find love and promotion in old Vienna.