Word: hjalmer
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Dates: during 1996-1996
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...estranged for many years, but that old Werle, on the eve of a new marriage with his housekeeper, Mrs. Sorby, is seeking a reconciliation. The son will have none of it, however, particularly after learning of the part his father has played in the life of Gregers' old schoolfriend, Hjalmer Ekdahl (Will LeBow), who is also a guest at the party. Shocked and revolted by his discoveries, Gregers rejects his father's offer and resolves instead to free his old friend from the "lie" on which the latter's happiness is built...
...rest of the play takes place in the Ekdal apartment, a modest but comfortably homelike apartment of which we see only the kitchen and studio. Here Hjalmer rules as king, with a devoted wife (Karen MacDonald) and adoring daughter Hedvig (Emma Roberts) who lavish their care on him and serve him almost slavishly. Here, too, his aged father (Jerome Kilty) can forget his disgrace in alcohol--when he can get it. There is a storeroom which he has converted into a small forest with a few pine trees and some rabbits, where he can relive his days as a great...
...funny; this production favors a style of self-revelation that continually provokes laughter--and not a few hisses. But the acting, like the characterization, is not reduced to pure satire. Each person reveals psychological depths and complexities that figure into the overall ambivalence of the play. Will LeBow as Hjalmer comes across as a theatrical poseur in his own house, painting himself alternately as a self-sacrificing hero, a man of genius, and the loving patriarch of his household. This pose that might seem a trifle overdone without the perspective offered in the first act of a much-diminished Hjalmer...
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