This is an exciting regeneration of Strindberg's classic play dealing with an unhappy marriage in which a couple's only daughter becomes a wedge and a weapon. Sjöberg used the cast from his staged version at the Royal Dramatic Theater. Georg Rydeberg (Hour of the Wolf) is featured as the father-"The Captain," an officer, a scientist and a representative in the shared world of Strindberg and Sjöberg of the patriarchal system. Gunnel Lindblom (The Silence) is his wife, Laura, whose corresponding lack of social status is compensated for with an arsenal of psychological armaments. The Captain, an atheist whose only hope for immortality lies in his daughter, is slowly driven mad by his wife's insinuations that he is not the child's father. Peter Cowie notes: "The Father, written in 1887, met with a derisive press when it appeared in print. But Sjöberg has always perceived that beyond Strindberg's insufferable and obsessive misogyny there dwells a supreme dramatist whose control of mood and understanding of psychology rivals Ibsen's." However, The Father is also a vigorous critique of Nietzsche's concept of the "superman," much in vogue at the time. This battle of the sexes can be viewed as the defeat of the superior warrior by his fragile but cunning foe.