Tag Archives: Ibsen

Nora: A Doll’s House

Young Vic Theatre,
66 The Cut,
London SE1 8LZ
TICKETS: 020 7922 2922.
Runs: 1hr 45 mins without interval
Review of perf seen Feb 12, 2020:

© Marc Brenner, Anna Russell-Martin, Amaka Okafor, Natalie Klamar – the three Noras, walking into their house…

To those who know Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Stef Smith and Glasgow Citz/Young Vic radical reworking will come as something of a shock. Continue reading

Hedda Tesman

Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre ****
Runs 2hrs 30 mins with one interval

Review of perf seen Sept 5, 2019:

© Johan Persson, Haydn Gwynne as the unhappy, self-hating Hedda Tesman...

© Johan Persson, Haydn Gwynne as the unhappy, self-hating Hedda Tesman…

Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler – along with Nora Helmer – are two of the most haunting characters in the classical theatre repertoire.  Continue reading

The Lady from the Sea

Donmar Warehouse, London ****

© Manuel Harlan, Finbar Lynch (Doctor Wangel) and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Ellida - a marriage trying to find a new way of being...

© Manuel Harlan, Finbar Lynch (Doctor Wangel) and Nikki Amuka-Bird as Ellida – a marriage trying to find a new way of being in 1950s Caribbean…

Past productions of The Lady from the Sea have often portrayed Ellida, Ibsen’s eponymous protagonist, as half-mad with barely comprehensible yearnings. Continue reading

A Doll’s House

A Doll’s House, after Henrik Ibsen, concept and direction by Fix&Foxy (DK), presented by Theatre of Europe with Chelsea Theatre in Rep

Secret venue for each performance (****)

Audience for Theatre of Europe's A Doll's house, somewhere in London...

Audience for Theatre of Europe’s A Doll’s house, somewhere in London…

Theatre of Europe’s Ibsen project couldn’t be more timely. At a moment when England seems determined to cut itself off, here is proof concrete that when it comes to art and creativity, artists really know no boundaries. Continue reading

The Master Builder

The Old Vic, London (****)

© Manuel Harlan. Sarah Snook (Hilde Wangel) and Ralph Fiennes (Halvard Solness) in The Master Builder, Old Vic, Feb 2016

© Manuel Harlan.
Sarah Snook (Hilde Wangel) and Ralph Fiennes (Halvard Solness) in The Master Builder, Old Vic, Feb 2016

Before seeing this latest revival of Ibsen’s remarkable examination of age, desire, and the sub-conscious, I worried that Ralph Fiennes’s Halvard Solness, the self-taught and `lucky’ master builder might dwarf the rest of the cast and the production. Would the Hilde Wangel be able to hold her own against him? Continue reading

Little Eyolf

Almeida Theatre, London (****)

© Hugo Glendinning

© Hugo Glendinning

Richard Eyre, the National Theatre’s former supremo is making himself something of a specialist when it comes to Ibsen. Having adapted and directed Hedda Gabler and Ghosts to loud acclaim, now he’s taken on Ibsen’s less familiar Little Eyolf. What emerges is a taut chamber portrait of marriage and guilt – a template for later studies of marital warfare from Strindberg to Albee. Continue reading