LIMITED ENGAGEMENT OCTOBER 2-12, 2025

WHAT? A STRINDBERG COMEDY!

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY PRESENTS STRINDBERG REP
IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PREMIERE OF "FIRST WARNING!" (1892),
DIRECTED AND NEWLY TRANSLATED BY ROBERT GREER.**

WHERE AND WHEN:
Theater for the New City presents the August Strindberg Rep production of "First Warning"
October 2 to 12, 2025 at Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (at E. 10th Street)
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 PM, Sundays at 3:00 PM
Previews October 2-3, opens October 4, runs through October 12 on the following schedule:
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 PM, Sundays at 3:00 PM
$18 general admission, $15 seniors and students.
Box office: www.theaterforthenewcity.net. (212) 254-1109
Running time: 45 minutes


From October 2 to 12, 2025, Theater for the New City will present August Strindberg Rep in the English-language premiere of Strindberg's little-known "First Warning!" (1892), directed and newly translated by Robert Greer. The play is Strindberg's only comedy. It explores his fascination with love, jealousy, and the battle of the sexes through a farcical exploration of a stormy marital quarrel.

This semi-autobiographical marital comedy has never before been produced in English. It offers audiences a glimpse of Strindberg as a provocateur, challenging morality and social convention, and as a craftsman experimenting with new theatrical forms. It offers a surprising glimpse of Strindberg in a lighter, satirical mood. Known worldwide for the searing naturalism of "Miss Julie" and "The Father," Strindberg here turns his attention to the follies of marriage, jealousy, and vanity with a comic touch.

In the play, Axel and Olga have been married for fifteen stormy years. For a winter holiday, they have rented rooms in a house in Germany owned by a baroness and her bratty young daughter, Rosa. Axel--tormented by jealousy--resolves for the umpteenth time to leave Olga. Amid a few rounds of arguments and confessions during his packing, she softens toward him, especially after the offer of a great gift revealed in the second half of the play.

Strindberg subtitled the play “A Comedy.” It centered on Axel's jealousy toward his much younger wife, her friends, and the gossip surrounding them. Instead of spiraling into murder or despair (as in "The Father"), the situation resolves with irony and reconciliation. The object of the “warning” is Axel's vanity and insecurity, with Strindberg commenting on generational differences in marriage, the male ego and bourgeois morality. The irksome, nettling young Rosa often serves as the voice of insight and warning in the comedy. She observes the tensions, betrayals, and hidden resentments of the adults around her and interprets them for the audience. Thus she embodies the “warning” of the play’s title: that the sins and failures of parents will resonate in the lives of their children. Strindberg tells us that the children can do something about it.

As a parody of contemporary artistic forms and late Victorian mores, "First Warning" is oddly parallel to "The Importance of Being Earnest." The two plays premiered the same year at a time when the world first began to appreciate a woman's possible enjoyment of sexual delight.

PRODUCTION HISTORY OF "FIRST WARNING"
The play relates an actual incident from Strindberg's first marriage, to which he makes reference in his novel "A Fool's Confession" (written between 1887 and 1888). Originally titled "Första varningen" in Swedish, it had its world premiere at Residenztheater, Berlin, January 22, 1893, where it was a huge success. It had been accepted but never performed at Sweden's Royal Theatre (Dramaten) in 1892. The actors boycotted the play after the first reading because they found Rosa's role immoral. Reviewers thought the same when the play was published by Bonniers in the collection Dramatik in 1893. They were shocked by the erotically experienced and open-hearted Rosa. The play premiered at the Residenztheater in Berlin, on January 22, 1893, under the title "Herbstzeichen" (Signs of Autumn). It was printed in both Germany and Sweden that same year.

In Svenska Dagbladet, Hjalmar Sandberg wrote that Rosa was a peculiar role, that her approachability became comical, but also that she seemed too daring yet childish for the stage of development “represented by her nineteen years.” Gustav Fröding expressed a different opinion in Karlstads-Tidningen, describing Rosa as “an eccentric, pompous youngster, portrayed with admirable certainty and truth."

There was a Swedish premiere tour with Julia Håkansson/Olof Hillberg in 1907. When Första varningen was finally staged, it was at Strindberg's Intima Teatern in Stockholm on September 14, 1910. By now Strindberg was a renowned playwright. Several reviewers were as fascinated by Rosa as Fröding had been seventeen years earlier.

In 1913, "Första varningen" was staged again at the Intima Teatern as a prelude to Strindberg's "Creditors." Interest was also drawn in this production to the role of “the teenage Rosa, whose precocious love life is laid out for dissection.” (G.B., Svenska Dagbladet) In 1948, "Första varningen" was staged together with Strindberg's "Mother Love" on Radio Theatre. The reviewer in Stockholms Tidning was impressed. Maj-Britt Nilsson played Rosa “ruthlessly and juicy.” There was nothing left of the 1890s ingenue, which was completely dated in 1948. Ingemar Bergman was in charge of the direction. Radio Theatre reprised "The First Warning" in 1960, again under Bergman's direction with Gunnar Björnstrand and Eva Dahlbeck in the lead roles.

Research by Robert Greer has detected no previous English language production of this play. His adaptation sets the play in Switzerland in 1953. He writes, "The play has a once-upon-a-time quality and its characters that of a comic fairytale, reminiscent of an elaborate Swiss clock."

WHO'S WHO IN THE CAST
Natalie Menna plays Olga, Mike Roche plays Axel, Holly O'Brien plays Rosa and Anne Stockton plays the Baroness. Lighting design is by Alexander Bartenieff. Costume design is by Billy Little. Stage Manager is Jose Ruiz.