Author Attempts to Bare Strindberg’s Obsession

How would you illustrate playwright August Strindberg’s obsession with women?

In Anne Bogart’s new work, “Strindberg Sonata,” opening April 13 at the Mandell Weiss Center for the Performing Arts, a naked woman will be on stage for most of the play.

Bogart, who co-wrote the piece with longtime collaborator Jeff Halpern, said her choice contains nothing “sexual” or “obscene.” There was, however, something provocative about the angry way the author of “Miss Julie” portrayed women.

“I’ve been interested in Strindberg for a long time, because there’s something sick--but fascinating--about his relationships to women,” Bogart said. “He struggled against women for years, and, in his inferno period, he realized that the woman he struggled with was inside himself.”

Bogart, who will take a leave of absence this fall from teaching duties at UC San Diego to become the artistic director of the highly regarded Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, R.I., in September, calls Trinity’s selection of her “a bold choice.” The writer-director, who won an Obie award for “No Plays, No Poetry . . . ,” a play based on the writings of Bertolt Brecht, plans to introduce new work during her tenure at Trinity.

The timing of “Strindberg Sonata,” is a happy one, Bogart said, because, on April 27, it will be followed by the Marquis Public Theatre production of Strindberg’s “A Dream Play.” Bogart focused her play, running through April 22, on a time of suicidal breakdown in the writer’s life, that led to a change of writing--and heart.

The Marquis, which will run its production through June, has chosen a play that Bogart calls “one of the most beautiful” of Strindberg’s works after that period.

San Diego’s late-night clubs are hoppin’. Eileen Bowman, the La Mesa performer who went on to play Snow White at last week’s Academy Awards telecast, was not discovered at the Abbey Restaurant’s cabaret club, but she did develop her confidence as a singer there. (The Saturday night musical fest continues sans Snow White, but you can catch a half-hour telecast of Bowman’s work at the Abbey on April 10 on KTTY-TV Channel 69 at 5 p.m.) After Hours at City Hall continues at the Progressive Stage Company on Friday and Saturday nights, through Oct. 28, with ever-changing music, comedy and theater acts.

And now Judy Milstein, the creator of Underground at the Lyceum, plans something new at her late-night forum--an ongoing comedic cast, a la “Saturday Night Live.”

Milstein already has 15 people set for her Underground Ensemble. The group will write the material in sessions at Milstein’s house, and perform its own work Friday and Saturday nights, starting with “The Hunt” April 28, a parody of the search for self-contentment under the gurus of the New Age movement.

Some people know William Murray as the author of New Yorker magazine’s “Letter from Italy,” which he has written since 1961. Others know the San Diego resident as a horse-racing novelist and Del Mar Race Track fan, or as the son of Natalia Danesi Murray, author of “Darlinghissima,” a story of her love affair with Janet Flanner, who used to write the New Yorker’s “Letter from Paris.” Now, local audiences have a chance to appreciate Murray as a counsel for the plaintiff in the San Diego Gilbert & Sullivan Company’s “Trial by Jury,” playing through April 9 at Balboa Park’s Casa del Prado.

“Trial by Jury” shares a triple bill with “Cox and Box,” Sullivan’s pre-Gilbert concoction about a greedy landlord who tries to get double rent by combining a tenant who works nights with a tenant who works days in the same apartment, without either’s knowledge, and a segment devoted to popular English songs of the 15th and 16th centuries.

Murray’s foray into opera actually predates his interest in writing. He started out as a singer in Italy and over the years alternated writing assignments with performing in operas and musicals in New York, Los Angeles and on summer stock tours, with the balance tipping more and more heavily to writing over the years. This performance, his San Diego debut, marks his first singing role after a lull of 12 years.

“My original idea was to support my writing habit by singing,” said Murray. “Then I realized that I wasn’t going to be Enrico Caruso. So now I support my singing by writing. . . . I had a lot of fun with the Gilbert & Sullivan Company. If my wife doesn’t divorce me, I might do it again.”

PROGRAM NOTES: The Tony-award winning San Francisco Mime Troupe will bring “Secrets in the Sand,” a musical comedy satire about the effects of atmospheric atomic testing on a movie cast and crew, to Marston Middle School at 8 p.m. April 19. The performance will benefit Alliance for Survival’s Nuclear Test Ban Project. Call 277-0991 for tickets . . . . Starmakers, a theater program that is unique in integrating disabled and non-disabled actors and performers, will present “Old Silent Movie,” the story of a day’s shooting at a silent movie studio in 1922, on April 13-16 at Carlsbad Cultural Center. The last performance of the program, sponsored by the Assn. for Retarded Citizens, coincides with the 100th anniversary of the birth of Charlie Chaplin . . . . The ever-extending run of “I’m Not Rappaport” at the Gaslamp Quarter Theatre just got longer. April 29 is the new closing date . . . . The Old Globe Theatre’s Play Discovery Program features Edit Villareal’s “Crazy from the Heart,” a drama about an ancient Indian gambling game, Monday at 7:30 p.m. at Cassius Carter.