Bergman’s Scènes de la vie conjugale (Scenes from a Marriage), an intimate chronicle of Johan and Marianne’s crumbling relationship, gets a virtuoso interpretation from renowned actors Ruth Vega Fernandez and Frank Vercruyssen. Maverick Belgian ensemble tg STAN appropriates the script, injecting new cadences and contexts that, paradoxically, multiply the impact of the Swedish filmmaker’s masterpiece.

It began with a Swedish TV mini-series, six 49-minute episodes written and directed by Ingmar Bergman in 1972 and starring his favourite actors, Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann. From that footage, Bergman distilled his 1974 film Scenes from a Marriage, a claustrophobic and powerful work whose intensity evoked the plays of such great Scandinavian writers as Strindberg and Ibsen.

Fascinated by Bergman’s scalpel-sharp cinematic account, renowned actors Ruth Vega Fernandez and Frank Vercruyssen threw themselves whole-heartedly into adapting it for the theatre. Together (and apart) they chronicle the stages in the marriage of Marianne, a divorce lawyer, and Johan, a professor of applied psychology, as their relationship is gradually undermined by Johan’s attraction to Paula, a younger woman. From lies and separation to adultery and abortion, destructive forces chip away at their seemingly ideal marriage.

In tackling Bergman’s landmark work, Belgian theatre company tg STAN (S[top] T[hinking] A[bout] N[ames]) goes far beyond a straight retelling. On a stripped-down set, this groundbreaking ensemble takes liberties, appropriates the script and gives it a new cadence and interpretation—an act of disloyalty that, paradoxically, multiplies the power of the filmmaker’s penetrating gaze. Poised on an imaginary line between acting and non-acting, the two performers draw viewers into an unsettling landscape where we are both voyeurs and participants.