Henrik Ibsen - classic or dud

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I saw one of his plays last night ("Hedda Gabler") and I read another years ago ("Ghosts").

I like them both a lot. That whole thing about hypocrisy and people keeping up appearences etc. has become a big hackneyed, but he does it so well.

"Hedda Gabler" has some great dramatic reversals in it too. And a wonderful Dirty Judge.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 5 June 2003 12:35 (twenty-two years ago)

Saw a Hedda Gabler abt a year ago (dir David Esbjornson) that played a lot of things for laughs, successfully. The uh uh philosophy-bum character: "I will write a history of...THE FUTURE" *pause* dullard husband: "well I never would have thought of that."

I think Bloom has made a Hedda = Iago argt somewhere.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 5 June 2003 13:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Hedda G is tops for me.

― the pinefox, Thursday, 5 June 2003 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Hedda is a bit more pitiable than Iago... I mean she is a bitch, but you do feel sorry for the way her life has been stultified.

the production I saw kind of did it for laughs too. Hedda and her husband were like characters in a Coen Brothers film. The Judge was BRILLIANT. I want to be a judge so I can be just like him.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 5 June 2003 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

"A gloomy sort of ghoul, bent on groping for horrors by night, and blinking like a stupid old owl when the warm sunlight of the best of life dances into his wrinkled eyes."

― Alex K (Alex K), Thursday, 5 June 2003 13:18 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, I think that was Ibsen's point, that there was this terrifically brilliant woman, completely boxed in, so her genius had nothing to do except tear the box apart. But the nihilist glee she took in doing it is very Iagoish I think.

I should probably read this again, I don't remember any judge...

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 5 June 2003 14:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Classic.

Hedda G stands up to a lot more rigorous stuffs than some of the other others. I'm sure that's a cause of it's popularity rather than an effect, but Ghosts, Doll's House, et al are all pretty impressive.

I was in a production of The Wild Duck once while in college. Too bad I wasn't able to catch some of what was in it until much later when I realized the production probably could have been a lot better. It certainly wasn't the writing.

― martin m. (mushrush), Thursday, 5 June 2003 14:24 (twenty-two years ago)

oddly though, the other woman character seems far less circumscribed than Hedda - but then she is an intellectual.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 5 June 2003 14:25 (twenty-two years ago)

ghosts can be impressive, I've also seen really really dull treatments of it. One of my formative theatrical experiences was Kneehigh Theatre doing an absolutely manic open-air Peer Gynt. Made quite an impression on me.

― Matt (Matt), Thursday, 5 June 2003 14:35 (twenty-two years ago)

i like "the wild duck" too. i remember being quite taken with the idea of the sustaining 'life-lie' and the morality of depriving someone of it.

― cameron, Thursday, 5 June 2003 14:50 (twenty-two years ago)

K-classic. I have a weakness for this Scandanavian realist literature/theater. I should take this chance to recommend a very perverse and entertaining, albeit quite grim at times, novel by Hjalmar Soderberg, Doctor Glas.

I once read an essay that tried to reconstruct the performance styles in the "new" theaters where Ibsen's work was first performed ("new" because they established new codes of realism--which today might appear more melodramatic than realist--and explicitly pitted themselves against the more traditional theater). I wish I could find the cite; it was interesting.

― amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 5 June 2003 15:27 (twenty-two years ago)

part of the thing with last night's production of Hedda Gabler is they were being defiantly un-naturalistic.

Rener's great Ibsen fact - apparently in Norwegian his wordplay is very impressive, to such an extent that James Joyce had a crack at teaching himself the language so he could read Ibsen in the original.

My own great Ibsen fact - in the early days of his career, J.M. Barrie was hailed as "our own Ibsen", because of the challenging nature of his "problem" plays.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Thursday, 5 June 2003 15:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Great Ibsen Fact #3: JJ wrote a letter to Ibsen on his 80th (?) birthday commending his 'lofty impersonal power'

― the pinefox, Thursday, 5 June 2003 15:43 (twenty-two years ago)

...I think it's easy to condescend to this stuff now, since we've now had many decades of derivations of its troubled-woman thematics and kammerspiel construction. But I think it remains really powerful and often very true. I don't think the power of a naturalistic, committed performance of "Hedda Gabler" should be underestimated, even though many directors often feel the demand for novelty and stage older plays in defiantly anachronistic styles.

― amateurist (amateurist), Thursday, 5 June 2003 15:44 (twenty-two years ago)

writing intentionally un-stageable plays - CLASSIC CLASSIC CLASSIC.

― vahid (vahid), Thursday, 5 June 2003 16:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I only ever studied Ibsen in depth while an undergraduate and mostly in the context of studying directing/acting rather than dramatic writing. I agree with amateurist that the stuff is really powerful and I think more than just often very true.

Sometimes it bums me out that a 19 or 20 year old director student me couldn't really wrap my head around some of the ideas of characters' motivations. In a lot of ways, Hedda's manipulating because it's the only way she can use her intelligence in her situation.

I took a movement acting class from Jacques Lecoq once, and when he found out how old I was (19, if I recall correctly), he told me I didn't have enough life experience to be taking this kind of acting class. (Or rather, his wife told me as she was translating and I like most of the students didn't speak French.) I don't want to hijack this thread into something where the younger folks on this board argue that they get Ibsen, because I'm certainly not arguing that I wasn't just a moron life experience-wise at 19, but I do think it amazing how much more powerful Ibsen's work is to read and to see performed well as I've gotten older and learned more about relationships and people.

― martin m. (mushrush), Thursday, 5 June 2003 16:17 (twenty-two years ago)

classic. I like Ghosts and the Dolls house. But I have only read them not seen them, and I actually agree with Martin that I suspect I would understand more when I am older. Has anyone read the AS Byatt book about the man who is writing a biography of a man who wrote a biography of Ibsen? i wonder how close its depiction is.

― isadora (isadora), Thursday, 5 June 2003 23:17 (twenty-two years ago)

I read An Enemy Of The People in high school and was fairly indifferent to it, but it ends with one of my favorite quotes ever: "The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."

― Justyn Dillingham (Justyn Dillingham), Friday, 6 June 2003 02:48 (twenty-two years ago)

I don't think the power of a naturalistic, committed performance of "Hedda Gabler" should be underestimated, even though many directors often feel the demand for novelty and stage older plays in defiantly anachronistic styles.

I don't hold with naturalistic play stagings. the theatre cannot communicate the kind of realism that film can, so there's no point trying.

the production I saw was not anachronistic (apart from incorporating a telephone as a a way of eliminating a minor character), but was more a-historical rather than locked in the period the play was written in.

the company in question have tended to do violent Elizabethan and Jacobean plays... it was interesting to see them apply their methods to a more domestic subject.

― DV (dirtyvicar), Friday, 6 June 2003 08:03 (twenty-two years ago)

ten years pass...

seeing A Doll's House in Brooklyn in a couple weeks... Read it in school and have seen a couple film versions (Fassbinder, Jane Fonda). Anyone see it in the West End?

http://www.bam.org/theater/2014/a-dolls-house

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 February 2014 17:49 (eleven years ago)

Studying Ghosts at A-Level put me off this guy for life.

― I wish to incorporate disco into my small business (chap), Saturday, 22 February 2014 17:54 (eleven years ago)

haunted eh

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 22 February 2014 17:57 (eleven years ago)

well Brantley loved this production, glad i bought my ticket before the reviews

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Friday, 28 February 2014 21:39 (eleven years ago)

just read his final play, When We Dead Awaken, last week—not his best work, but I found it strangely affecting, and the issues it raised w/r/t art & objectification worth reflecting on (googling the play just now, I see that Adrienne Rich has written about this; curious to see what her take will be)

― my collages, let me show you them (bernard snowy), Saturday, 1 March 2014 20:25 (eleven years ago)

eleven months pass...

Ghosts w/ Lesley Manville, dir Richard Eyre coming to Brooklyn now...

http://www.bam.org/theater/2015/ghosts

― touch of a love-starved cobra (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 24 February 2015 01:13 (ten years ago)

four years pass...

god i wish i had been alive in december of 1879 when A Doll's House premiered at the royal theatre. not a cell phone in sight. just 1,600 danish couples about to get into a huge shitfit fight in the carriage ride home
— christina (@floozyesq) October 18, 2019

― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Saturday, 19 October 2019 13:47 (five years ago)

five years pass...

huh, just saw that a movie adaptation of Hedda Gabler is in production, starring Tessa Thompson!

― jaymc, Saturday, 19 April 2025 14:11 (five months ago)

and directed by Nia DaCosta

― jaymc, Saturday, 19 April 2025 14:12 (five months ago)

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