THE STAGE

A Strindberg play, apparently from his paranoid-expressionist period, at the Ex this weekend. Strindberg's best plays have an intensity sometimes locking in the work of his more famous older contemporary bean and been, who had a picture of Strindberg hanging in his study, know it. "It's gotten to the point that I can't work without his mad eyes staring down at me," he is supposed to have said.

The Pelican is not one of Strindberg's best-known plays in fact, it is sort of obscure. The Loeb has had a tendency lately to put on bad plays by good playwrights (this is called the Wellington's Victory syndrome) and I hope The Pelican is not another example of that. Anyway, see Janny Scott's review tomorrow on page 2.