Love's labour's losing it

The West End is full of them. From Shakespeare to Strindberg, warring couples have always been a hit at the theatre, says Daniel Rosenthal. But why are we so keen to watch a marriage go up in flames?

A casual glance at the current West End theatre listings could drive a Relate counsellor to drink. Last night, the Macbeths (aka Sean Bean and Samantha Bond) vacated the Albery, where for three months they have made the fractured unions in the House of Windsor seem models of royal wedded bliss. A short walk up St Martin's Lane brings you to Abigail's Party, Mike Leigh's Seventies satire, and the front room in which brassy Beverly and mousy Laurence are divided by much more than their respective hatred and love of olives.

Turn left, stroll up Shaftesbury Avenue and at the Lyric, you will find Ian McKellen and Frances de la Tour "celebrating" 25 years of mutual loathing as Edgar and Alice in August Strindberg's Dance of Death; while next door at the Apollo, Dawn French stars in My Brilliant Divorce, the one-woman play by Geraldine Aron about a middle-aged wife coping with her hubby's sudden departure. There's no respite south of the river, where the National Theatre hosts the British premiere of Honour, by Australian dramatist Joanna Murray-Smith, in which a sixtysomething journalist (Corin Redgrave) abruptly abandons his wife of 32 years (Eileen Atkins) for a woman half his age.

Troubled marriages have, as Murray-Smith noted in a recent interview, been a staple of drama for centuries, appearing in many guises from soap opera to high opera, and played for tears, laughter (stand up all those Restoration cuckolds) and even social revolution (Nora's shocking exit at the end of A Doll's House).

The most common formula, as seen in Honour, My Brilliant Divorce, Peter Nichols' Passion Play, Hugh Whitemore's Disposing of the Body, among many others, sees one spouse (more often than not the man) betraying the other's trust and devotion. The West End's current feast of domestic misery is therefore exceptional, because in Dance of Death and Abigail's Party we have two concurrent productions in which audience sympathy is not decisively directed towards husband or wife, and the traffic in insults and recrimination constantly flows both ways. So, with awards season in full swing, it seems an opportune moment to see how Strindberg and Leigh's dysfunctional duos fit into the list of Most Hellish Stage Marriages of All Time.

Grouped together, the nominees and winners below might suggest that Saint Paul was wrong to assert in Corinthians that "It is better to marry than to burn." Yet the 20th-century titles continue to be extremely popular (Dance of Death was a Broadway hit with McKellen and Helen Mirren in 2001; Abigail's Party has followed a sold-out, extended run at the Hampstead with a five-month commercial transfer). Should we conclude that the middle-class couples who make up such a large section of the theatregoing public flock to these plays not because they can soak up the on-stage adultery, rage and disillusionment while thinking "How very different from our home life!", but because Strindberg and Leigh are holding up the mirror to their audiences' relationships?

The veteran producer Michael Codron would probably say they do. A few years ago, when he and Oxford Stage Company director Dominic Dromgoole were thinking of bringing a gay play into the West End, Codron noted: "You have to be careful. The gay audience only lasts about three months then there's nothing. What you really want is a play for couples that hate each other. Sad marrieds. They'll keep coming for years."

Best Classical Greek Break-Up

Oedipus makes a strong bid as the first man who really did marry his mother, rather than a woman merely made in mum's image, and only misses the cut because he and Jocasta shared 15 happy years before the truth emerged. Agamemnon and Clytemnestra also challenge for the title (he sacrifices their daughter; she murders him; their son murders her). But the laurels must go to Jason and Medea. After he leaves her for a young princess, she kills their sons, his new bride and his father-in-law.

Medea on Jason: "You were mistaken if you thought you could dishonour my bed and live a pleasant life... My pain's a fair price, to take away your smile." Jason on Medea: "You abomination! Of all women most detested/ By every god, by me, by the whole human race!"

Best Elizabethan Mismatch

Christopher Marlowe set a fairly high tariff in Edward II, with the joyless mis-match between Queen Isabella and Edward, who longs to leave her for his beloved Piers Gaveston. Then, as with so much else, Shakespeare raised the bar several notches. Some might select the Macbeths, or Octavia and Marc Antony in Antony and Cleopatra as the Bard's least likely candidates for an appearance on Mr & Mrs. I choose Richard III and Lady Anne. A woman decides to marry the man who killed her father and first husband? "It won't last," you say; and you'd be right.

Anne on Richard: "Never hung poison on a fouler toad/ Out of my sight! Thou dost infect mine eyes." Richard on Anne: "I'll have her but I will not keep her long."

Best European Meltdown

You will find a sizeable contingent of Michael Codron's "sad marrieds" in the collected works of Chekhov and Ibsen, but Strindberg masterminded this category's most ferocious, yet evenly matched battle of the sexes. He had been married and divorced twice by 1900, when he wrote Dance of Death. The dramatist's short-lived marriages to the actress Siri von Essen and the journalist Frida Uhl undoubtedly fed his portraits of artillery captain Edgar and Alice, the former actress whose abandoned career would surely have outshone her husband's. Strindberg's principal models, however, were his sister, Anna, and brother-in-law, Hugo Philp, who had been one of his most generous benefactors. After reading Dance of Death, Philp threw it into the fire.

Edgar on Alice: "I suppose you could be attractive – to other people, when it suits you." Alice on Edgar: "You toadie to anybody menial, because you are a despot with the character of a slave."

Best 20th-century American Split

James and Mary Tyrone's booze-and-drug-dependent Long Day's Journey Into Night would have earned an invitation to the awards dinner for Eugene O'Neill (who once said that of all plays, he would most like to have written Dance of Death). My only nomination for a female dramatist goes to Lillian Hellman for The Little Foxes, in which the Deep South is home to the profound, mutual contempt of the Giddens: dying Horace and disenchanted Regina. I remember Penelope Wilton as Regina at the Donmar in 2001, offhandedly telling her wealthier other half: "I couldn't have known that you would get heart trouble so early and so bad. I'm lucky, Horace. I've always been lucky." Both couples must concede defeat, however, to direct descendants of Strindberg's Edgar and Alice: George and Martha in Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Through almost three hours of confrontation, their well of vitriol never runs dry.

George on Martha: "There aren't many more sickening sights than you with a couple of drinks in you and your skirt up over your head." Martha on George: "If you existed I'd divorce you."

Best 20th-century British Bust-up

There are plenty of candidates in the work of Alan Ayckbourn, yet their unhappiness is often most evident in the space beneath or between the lines. For the cards-on-the-table honesty beloved of the Jerry Springer show, the Abigail's Party combination of Beverly, the erstwhile beautician, and Laurence, the put-upon estate agent, is in a (lower-middle-) class of its own.

Laurence on Beverly: "Do you know, something, Beverly? You're ignorant. You always have been!" Beverly on Laurence (moments before he suffers a fatal heart attack): "You're dead from the waist down... let's face it!"