Ibsen’s Rosmersholm on stage in London

This video from Norway is called Ibsen 2006 Opening Ceremony.

From the British daily The Morning Star:

Ibsen‘s critique

(Wednesday 11 June 2008)

Rosmersholm
Almeida Theatre, London N1

ROBERT TANITCH enjoys Henrik Ibsen‘s once pilloried psychological play about Norway’s clashes between conservatives and socialists in 1884.

Henrik Ibsen had a rough ride from the critics when Rosmersholm had its London premiere at the Vaudeville in 1891. They dismissed his play as provincial, preposterous, morbid, tiresome, gloomy, nauseating, contemptible and childish.

August Strindberg got it absolutely right when he declared that the play was “crystal clear to anyone with knowledge of modern psychology.”

Sigmund Freud, incidentally, would later become one of the play’s greatest admirers.

Rosmersholm was written in response to the political revolution in Norway in 1884 when there were serious clashes between the traditional conservatives and the liberal free-thinkers and socialists.

Ibsen was strongly critical of the way that politicians and the scandal-mongering press had acted during the election.

Rosmer (Paul Hilton) had once been a priest and married. He abandoned his faith and became an atheist. His wife committed suicide.

He seeks a new morality and looks to a time when there will be harmony and truth in politics with everybody working together to the same end.

Rosmer’s housekeeper Rebecca West (Helen McCrory) had been his late father’s mistress. Under his tutelage, she too had become a free-thinker and an atheist.

Hedda Gabler: here.

Karen Blixen: here.

BBC television’s new adaptation of DH Lawrence’s novel Women in Love leaves something to be desired, writes Matthew Cookson: here.

Strindberg and Ingmar Bergman: here.

DH Lawrence’s poetry saved from censor’s pen. New edition of author’s work reveals him as a talented war poet who attacked British imperialism: here.

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