Monumental Swedish Artist meets Monumental Swedish Artist, June 20-24 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as director Ingmar Bergman takes a look at August Strindberg's expressionistic classic, The Ghost Sonata.

One of the best known of Strindberg's later, more experimental plays, The Ghost Sonata deals with familiar themes of death, family, secrets and the spiritual violence of human relations, all played out in a dramatic landscape half of this planet, half in a dimly-lit, psychological netherworld.

Bergman has stage Sonata three times before: first in 1941 shortly after he graduated from college; in Malmo 1954; and finally in a landmark 1973 production with The Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden (Dramaten), which also presents the current mounting.

Nearly all of Bergman theatrical ventures to be seen in New York have been presented at BAM. Among them are Miss Julie, Hamlet, Peer Gynt, The Winter's Tale, Madame de Sade and The Image.

Elin Klinga and Jan Malmsjo lead the cast, which also includes Jonas Malmsjo (Jan's son), Ingvar Kjellson, Virpi Pahkinen, Gertrud Mariano, Nils Eklund, Gerthi Kulle, Per Myrberg, Gunnel Lindblom, Anders Beckman, Orjan Ramberg, Margreth Weivers-Norstrom and Margareta Hallin. There will be only five performances. For information, call BAM at (718) 636-4100.

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New York City is in a Strindberg kind of mood these days. A full-blown Broadway production of Dance of Death is due on Broadway this fall. Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren will star under Sean Mathias' direction.

—By Robert Simonson