Overview

A powerful new play about the life of playwright August Strindberg, focusing on what he called his `Inferno period', when he suffered a notorious breakdown in Paris in 1896. Abandoning theatre, living a life of squalid splendour, Strindberg practices alchemy. In his hotel room he attempts to make gold from lead by finding the philosopher's stone, the secret of creation. As his view of reality disintegrates, his first two wives visit him to bring him to his senses. But their interventions spin out of control. And - are they really his wives at all?