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The Corn Exchange have made a name for themselves as theatrical adaptors of the highest calibre. Previously, they have produced stage versions of Nabakov’s Lolita, Joyce’s Dubliners, and recently an award-winning adaptation of Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-formed Thing, all directed by company-founder Annie Ryan. Their latest adaptation involves a less drastic transformation than the others. Ingmar Bergman’s haunting 1961 film Through A Glass Darkly was itself inspired by the chamber plays of Strindberg, and is constructed around a three-act theatrical framework. Based on a 2010 production, adapted by Jenny Worton, The Corn Exchange bring to the Project Arts Theatre a vivid, disturbing vision of Bergman’s film, that veers between strictly adhering to the source material and taking significant liberties.

The plot concerns a tightly-bound family unit: David, the father (Peter Gowen); Karin and Minus, his children (Beth Cooke and Colin Campbell); and Martin, Karin’s husband (Peter Gaynor). Behind a veneer of family ritual and pleasantries, a web of anxieties and tensions steadily becomes unravelled. David, a successful novelist, struggles with feelings of artistic inferiority as he finishes off his latest book. 17-year-old Minus, tremendously angsty and unsure of himself, is desperate to earn his father’s recognition. At the centre of this, Karin suffers from an unspecified mental illness, and the prospect of her completely losing her mind hangs over the characters, colouring their private world with a sense of desperate entrapment, typical of Bergman.

One of the most trying aspects of adapting Bergman is conveying his instantly recognisable visual style. Wide shots of the gorgeous Swedish island of Fårö (where Bergman would go on to set many of his films) dominate the film’s steady pace, a pace which can’t easily be translated to the suspenseful, energetic world of the stage. A sense of this romantic vision is captured, however. While the set design is typically minimal for the Project – a blank, grey stage decorated with four sliding screens and incidental pieces of furniture – ambient sounds and lengthy silences give a sense of an island’s still, foreboding calm. There is none of the visual exuberance that characterised previous Corn Exchange productions such as Man of Valour or Dubliners. The lighting is simple and restrained, showing deep respect for the subdued tone of the original.

The script is also remarkably faithful, though a few notable differences crop up. Bar the replacement of one entire scene, the only changes come in the form of snippets of additional dialogue, peppered throughout conversations. These additions by Worton occasionally clash with the cold and admittedly stilted tone of Bergman’s dialogue as directly translated, but they add a dash of humour and humanity to characters, who otherwise can be difficult to relate to. The performances reflect this change, bringing far more emotional range to their roles than the actors in the film, injecting moments of comic relief and outbursts of emotion into the weighty, philosophical drama they convey. This change isn’t necessarily good or bad; while on the one hand it prevents the despair and hopelessness from becoming overbearing, this was very much a part of the original’s intent. The adaptation also takes the understated moments of personal anguish and sexual torment which the film keeps simmering just under the surface, and explodes them into far more drastic interpretations, turning implications into at times horrifying literals. Karin and Martin’s sexually frigid relationship becomes all the more frustrated, and Minus and David’s confrontational relationship becomes far more aggressive and outspoken. These reinterpretations pump new and exciting energy into the story. However, this means that the dramatic highs in the play, when they come, lack the profound, shocking impact that they had in the film.

The Corn Exchange’s treatment of Through a Glass Darkly is ultimately a successful one. The austere island world of Bergman is translated for the most part authentically and with visible admiration, and in spite of occasional issues with cohesion, the deviances from the original offer a bold new vision of the cinematic classic. Annie Ryan has constructed a piece that should appeal to fans of Bergman and fans of theatre alike.