Word: rubek
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...play's main character Rubek (Alvin Epstein), an Ibsen figure, is an aging sculptor disillusioned with his work and the idle life that wealth and fame have brought him. Rubek and his young wife Maya (Stephanie Roth) have become estranged. Maya cannot provide him with artistic or spiritual inspiration, and Rubek cannot satiate her hedonistic needs...
Events come to a head at a mountain spa in Rubek's native Norway, where the couple attempt to find the solution to their problems in two of their fellow guests. The self-reflecting sculptor is reunited with Irene (played by both Elzbieta Czyzewska and Sheryl Sutton), the model who was the inspiration for his earlier work and his last hope for rekindling his artistic impulse. Similarly, Maya sees her salvation in Ulfheim (Mario Arrambide), a huge strapping bearhunter who represents the zest for life which has escaped Rubek...
...life is the enemy of art, then death must be its comrade. In the last acts Ibsen moves his characters to a health resort in the mountains--a look forward to Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain where on a peak high above the "real" world, Rubek and Irene are swept away in the mist and snow of a sudden storm. From below, in the bourgeois flatland, resounds the simple voice of Maja in a childish freedom song which is both mocking...
...CURRENT PRODUCTION the ending is unfortunately obscured by the way in which lights have been substituted for the storm. Obviously meteorological effects are not easily duplicated in a small-scale production, but the stop-action tableau which poses Rubek and Irene facing each other tenderly while the lights flash and die is unnecessarily ambiguous. Their only possible reunion should be clear: cold death on the great heights...
...character of Rubek is simply too archetypal, too close to Ibsen himself, to be acted fully. Michael Brewer approaches the role with a partially appropriate tone which is at once bored, petulant and bitter, but too often seems to slide into a monotone which is more the actor's than the role's. Rubek's wife Maja (Karen Ross) comes on like a little girl who wants to play house, but can find no playmate in her cynical husband. He has tried to buy and enjoy the ideal domesticity she embodies, but it is only life and cannot satisfy...