On Friday I bought two tickets to Through a Glass Darkly, the currently running theatrical adaptation of Ingmar Bergman’s 1961 film with Carey Mulligan in the lead role. With my flight landing at 6:20 pm I’d hoped the tickets were for a Sunday 8 pm performance, but I learned post-purchase that they were for a 3 pm show, so I asked Jett and Dylan to go in my place.


Carey Mulligan, Ben Rosenfield in Through A Glass Darkly.

“I’ve never seen Bergman’s Through a Glass Darkly so yesterday’s performance was my first exposure,” Jett writes in an iPhone review. “Going by An Education and Wall Street 2 I’ve thought of Mulligan as a super-talent who might get typecast as the mopey girl with a child-like face. I now stand corrected. While she does employ that innocent-playful demeanor here, her role as Karin showed her ability to go really, really dark.

“I think this role was important because Mulligan has finally found something that she can attack all your senses [with], using sex, comedy, endearment and tormenting terror. She scared the fuck out of me during her schizophrenic monologues, and yet I felt touched during her teary-blank stares. A small, maybe irrelevant detail that she’s really breaking out of her sweet-girl stereotype is the unexpected nudity. Two instances, short, not a big deal but it still says something about how she wants to be perceived.

“No one has doubted Mullligan’s ability, but now she’s given the kind of gritty performance that every powerful actress needs in their repertoire — to go batshit crazy.”

“Carey Mulligan gives a powerful performance,” Dylan wrote last night. “Beautiful use of minimal props and set design. Has a few good laughs. Overall an impressive experience.”

From the broadwayworld.com synopsis: “Karin (Carey Mulligan) is the central figure in the lives of her family, not least because her own tenuous grip on reality keeps everyone in constant motion around her.

“On an annual vacation to a beautiful remote island [i.e., Bergman’s Faro in the film], tensions flare as her husband (Jason Butler Harner), father (Chris Sarandon) and brother (Ben Rosenfield) struggle over the best way to help her. When a legacy of denial and repression boils over, threatening the future of the entire family, Karin decides that she must take command of her own destiny.”