Word: ibsenism
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Joseph Krutch, in an article in the current Nation, inspired by the performance-of "The Master Builder" in New York, points out that Ibsen in his later plays worked under the rule. "My business is to ask questions, not to answer them." It is to be noted that, although he stayed by this idea, Ibsen answered a very pressing question of New York producers last year, and bids fair to do the same this season; to wit: "What shall we play to stave off what promises to be a remarkably dull season...
...these men turned to Ibsen, and how the famous author, represented by several of his brain-children, rushed to the dike to keep out threatening boredom, is too well-known to be repeated. In a season of revivals, Ibsen headed the list, his only near competitors for honors being Gilbert and Sullivan. Now, however, at this early stage of the season, indications point strongly to the fact that he may again be called upon to rescue the public. Although this is too soon to come to any definite conclusions, when as perfect an actress as Miss Le. Gallienne is engaged...
Although it is unfortunate that the younger generation of authors cannot write enough worthwhile plays to satisfy the demand, it is a compliment to the theatregoing populace that it refuses to accept drivel and receives instead the thought-stimulating and inspiring lines of Ibsen. In this case, turning to the past is a sure sign of progress...
Gallienne scored a success in this Ibsen play last year. A builder of churches, turned bitter against God, concentrates thereafter upon homes for human beings. Fired by the love of a young woman who has sought him out in his childless house, h.9 builds one of these homes with high towers reaching up to the clouds. The master, builder even climbs to the top of his own creation, unfurls the flag at its summit, vindicates his courage before detractors below, before God above, before the woman he loves. His audacity spells his downfall. Miss Le Gallienne is also audacious...
...exercise of this archaic mode of expression, the drama continued until some 50 years ago, when there came the craze for realism. This, in its demand for photographic reproduction of life and its problems, which later evolved into the social drama of Ibsen and Galsworthy, ousted the spiritual element in the drama, killed imaginative dramatic writing, and was all of a piece with the growing materialistic tendency of the latter quarter of the nineteenth and the early years of the twentieth century...