Dance of Death, Lyric Shaftesbury, London <br></br>John Gabriel Borkman, Greenwich Theatre, London <br></br>The Safari Party, Hampstead, London <br></br>The Accrington Pals, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

I don't believe it! Strindberg has a Victor Meldrew moment

"Pleasure? The word sounds familiar. What does it mean?" says Frances de la Tour. From her faded chaise longue, she cocks an eyebrow at Ian McKellen who's hunched at his desk with his back to her. In August Strindberg's plays, matrimony is never a bundle of laughs. A bitter paranoid depressive, he got through three wives. His damning collected stories, Getting Married, so outraged 19th-century Sweden that his publisher was tried for blasphemy. And Alice and Edgar in Dance of Death (1900) surely inspired Albee's destructive duo in Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?

Alice and Edgar see their home as hell on earth. Each, indeed, refers to the other as a demon or vampire. Moreover Kurt – who paired them up years back – is sucked into their torments when he returns to the remote fortress where Edgar is clinging on as a decrepit, demented Captain. What's nice and rather surprising about Sean Mathias's West End production (adapted by Richard Greenberg from Strindberg's Part I, without the sequel), is how casual and droll the marital sniping seems at first. This Dance of Death is not so far off One Foot in the Grave. McKellen's wiry Edgar actually seems a loveable old grouse, muttering about the neighbours being scumbags, and de la Tour's ripostes are delivered with a teasing languor. Mathias further ensures the marriage feels familiar and timeless, filling long silences with detailed, naturalistic business.

Unfortunately, as soon as Owen Teale's Kurt arrives, the evening grows tedious. The tension should mount, for Kurt is nursing old wounds and erotically tempted by Alice. But Teale is peculiarly wooden. In fact, no one quite manages the slide into the nightmarishly gothic. The increasing references to devils and unbearable suffering sound histrionic – perhaps due to the comparatively cosy start. That said, McKellen's surreal danse macabre is riveting – poker-backed with arms slashing. Robert Jones's set has a threatening bleakness as, above the candelabra, a vast iron staircase spirals into a grim tower. One should additionally note that, after Teale has departed, the hesitant reconciliation between McKellen and de la Tour strikes a touching note of hope.

The British Theatre seems obsessed with Scandinavian classics this season. You'd think 2003 was Ibsen's centenary with the RSC rehearsing Brand, the Almeida set to reopen with The Lady from the Sea and Ingmar Bergman's Ghosts coming to the Barbican in May. Meantime, I caught English Touring Theatre's John Gabriel Borkman in Greenwich. This is another portrait of an old man in a marital "cold war", dreaming of starting again even as he stares death in the face.

Silver-bearded yet vigorous, Michael Pennington plays the disgraced businessman who's long been stuck neurotically pacing in his study, while his estranged wife, Gillian Barge's Gunhild, sits frostily downstairs. She's determined her son Erhart will be her loyal golden boy, but she has competition from Linda Bassett's Ella – Erhart's foster mother and JGB's jilted first love who now owns the house.

Stephen Unwin's production has a spare, yet pretty simplicity. The pine floor of Neil Warmington's set, furnished with a few chairs, runs into the outdoors where snow falls on a silver birch. That starkness sometimes seems to match the bare bones of Ibsen's scenario. Some moments do, however, seem flatly under-directed while others wax melodramatic, and Stephen Mulrine's translation can sound stiff. Still, Bassett (no relation), is a fine subtle actress, playing steely with tenderness underneath. Ibsen's condemnation of selfishness and his simultaneous celebration of self-determination come over clearly. And Pennington is memorably passionate, staggering up the mountain to die, still fantasising about the factories and ships he could have owned as the king of all he surveys.

Financial contracts and friendships are again entwined in The Safari Party – Tim (Preston Front) Firth's latest comedy staged by Alan Ayckbourn. For those not au fait with dinner party games, a "safari" means you head off to a different house for each course. The prandial niceties, predictably, turn sour. The young lads Daniel and Adam – who've inherited their dad's Cheshire farm – have hawked their kitchen table and frantically cobble the starters together from frozen bacon and old cheese. Their nouveaux riches neighbours – while keen to profitably marry off their daughter – are suckers for romanticised yarns about olde Cheshire customs. Only eventually, they realise they've been fleeced by German-born Inga, the local dealer in bygones who has flogged them the bullet-riddled table Daniel and Adam know only too well. Though Ayckbourn's cast are energetic, fundamentally the characters are bland or crudely exaggerated. The plot twists are strained and Firth's attempt to work in serious racism, domestic violence and countryside issues is superficial.

In The Accrington Pals, Peter Whelan's small-town tragedy remembers the eleventh battalion who were decimated at the Somme, while centring around their womenfolk back home in Lancashire. Written in 1981, Whelan's historical research feels dry at first and the narrative progress is jerky. Liz Cooke's set, for Rebecca Gatward's revival, also looks more like concrete pigsties than bombed homes. But Jane Hazelgrove is outstanding as May, the tough grocer who can't confess her love for Greg Haiste's ardent but frustrated Tom. His regiment's mournful songs from the trenches are also a haunting reminder of the human cost of war.

k.bassett@independent.co.uk

'Dance of Death': Lyric Shaftesbury, London W1 (0870 890 1107), to 31 May; 'John Gabriel Borkman': Lowry, Salford (0161 876 2000), 25-29 March; Oxford Playhouse (01865 305305), 1-5 April; Churchill, Bromley (020 8460 6677), 8-12 April; Richmond Theatre (020 8940 0088), 15-19 April; 'Safari Party': Hampstead, London NW3 (020 7722 9301), to 19 April; 'The Accrington Pals': WYP, Leeds (0113 213 7700), to 29 March

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