Word: ibsenism
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Master Builder. Ibsen's drama will open this week at the Lyric Stage, 54 Charles Street in Boston. Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. plus a Sunday matinee at 3 p.m., November 11 through December...
...mishandling of an obviously talented cast. Both Jonathan Epstein as Morell and Jonathan Emerson as Marchbanks deliver perfectly consistent, self-contained performances; unfortunately, the two characterizations are completely out of synch with each other. Epstein's Parson Morell partakes of the tragic stature of Pastor Manders in Ibsen's Ghosts, a part Epstein played last year. It is a moving, sympathetic portrayal, but its naturalism stands in uneasy contrast to Emerson's frenetic, histrionic, almost self-parodying Marchbanks. As the timid poet, Emerson shrinks, flinches and mugs his way to a good quantity of laughs. But the scene between...
...part makes for-midable demands on any player, but merits every bit of effort required. Bernard Shaw once wrote, in a letter to the actress Ellen Terry, "Leontes is a magnificent part, worth fifty Othellos (Shakespear knew nothing about jealousy when he wrote Othello), as modern as Ibsen, and full of wonderful music." The slur on Othello was poppycock, but Shaw was otherwise right on the mark...
Present Laughteris designed simply to entertain. Coward spoofs the "theater of ideas" advocated by Ibsen and Chekov in the character of Roland Maule, a young cuckoo-headed would-be playwright. Maule, a caricature of the "serious" dramatist, spouts streams of cliched arguments about "commercial theater," "intellectual significance,"and of course "posterity." Ironically Maule adores and admires Garry, who personified frivolous commercial theater...
...play shows once again that Ibsen was the central character in all his plays. What he argues again and again is that one must find, salvage or create one's own being before there can be wholeness of self...