“It’s autumn outside and in!,” exclaims the bluff retired captain of artillery, Edgar, as he takes a reading of the atmosphere in the general vicinity of his chilly wife, Alice, in August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death (at the Lynn F. Angelson Theater through March 10). Come and take the chill off yourself as this couple give each other a nice warm roasting for two intensely pleasurable, very funny hours of marital conflict. As with many other years-long quarrels between mates, this one isn’t quite what it seems.

Stripped down to three characters from the original six, and with its dialogue sharpened in an adaptation by Ireland’s Conor McPherson, the play is staged by Victoria Clark in the round. It’s a tiny space in which the audience feels immured with this querulous pair, who are approaching their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary when Alice’s cousin and onetime romantic partner, Curt, arrives for his first visit in many years. The captain (a terrific Richard Topol) and Alice (a malicious and tender Cassie Beck) aren’t used to visitors: they live on a small island, and not just on an island but in a former prison on the island. “They used to hang people downstairs,” remarks the captain. Making manifest their isolation, Clark stages events on an oval platform atop the stage, not much bigger than the ring out of which scowling sumo wrestlers