Word: ibsenism
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...Gabler - and with only a handful of standing-room tickets available each night for the remainder of the season, that means most people - there is a consolation: this Hedda is horrible, and Blanchett's performance is terrible. Horrible in the sense that, 114 years after it was written, Henrik Ibsen's play, about the attempts of a general's daughter to transcend her loveless marriage to a feckless history professor, is as misanthropic as ever. And terrible, in that Blanchett's performance inspires awe from the moment she first rises from her sofa to stretch, as smooth and svelte...
...hell of a Swiss watch—contrary to Soskin’s belief, its gears wouldn’t even know how to grind, much less churn. Simply put, Hedda Gabler was one of the best plays I have ever seen. It was a fantastic introduction to Ibsen, a perfect showcase for Rebecca Levy’s talent, and a brilliant confirmation of Mike Donahue’s genius. I was riveted from the opening line to the closing tableau...
...many people," wrote playwright Henrik Ibsen, "have nothing to do but yearn for happiness without ever being able to find it." But even that great Norwegian depressive might have become giddy with excitement at the prospect of Cate Blanchett playing his femme fatale Hedda Gabler, as the Australian star will do for the Sydney Theatre Company from late July. Ibsen's bored 19th century housewife with a gun is a volatile vehicle for a high-voltage actress looking to make her mark, a kind of career-defining harpy Hamlet. Just ask Judy Davis, who's now appearing on the Sydney...
When Henrik Ibsen wrote Hedda Gabler, he created characters whose psychologies would push them ever closer to destruction as the play progressed. Chekhov said that if a gun is onstage in the first act, it will go off in the last act; Ibsen is so bent on his characters’ destruction that he puts onstage two guns, a lighter, and a bar full of flammable alcohol. The move over Hedda’s duration from relative peace to high-strung shooting and burning is inexorable, highly telegraphed and oh-so-precisely plotted, rarely allowing a spare motivation or interaction...
...PHILANDERER. Shaw on Ibsen clubs and liberated groupies. 7:30 at the Loeb...