August Strindberg’s The Father coming to Nicosia

August Strindberg’s play The Father is coming to Nicosia in a Greek production for the Nicosia International Festival, with Achilleas Grammatikopoulos in the leading role. Prolific Swedish playwright Strindberg wrote the play in 1887 telling the struggle of two parents who disagree over the future of their child.

This naturalistic tragedy, as it has been called, unfolds in three acts as the mother and father battle to decide Bertha’s future. Translated into dozens of languages, one film adaptation and many theatre productions, The Father is still being performed to this day and an adaptation in Greek arrives at Nicosia on Tuesday.

The play presents a complicated family situation, the power struggle between the sexes, marriage and the conflicts within it. All themes that remain relevant today.

A war rages in the family’s living room regarding the upbringing and education of their daughter. The father and mother are so different and so committed to their perceptions that they refuse to compromise. The mother’s hint that her husband might not be the biological father has explosive results and sends the father into a spiral of insanity.

The Father

Adaptation of August Strindberg’s play. November 22. Nicosia Municipal Theatre, Nicosia. 8.30pm. www.soldoutticketbox.com