tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post116023605528686764..comments2024-01-07T06:59:04.212-05:00Comments on The Playgoer: Shaw Festival 06: Day 2Playgoerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02994724588504353485noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-41707880740180175812023-10-29T12:07:36.905-04:002023-10-29T12:07:36.905-04:00Myrhaf's observation about Ibsen's art bei...Myrhaf's observation about Ibsen's art being in large part mystical is right on target. I've always thought that the controversy surrounding "A Doll House" ended up misleading a great many people; because it got the reputation of being a feminist polemic (which it isn't), it made Ibsen seem like a didactic realist, instead of a fundamentally religious thinker, albeit an unconventional one. (No secularist could have written the last moment of "Brand" -- after the fatal avalanche, an unseen speaker's voice booms out over the snow field, which is now Brand's tomb: "HE IS THE GOD OF LOVE.") I saw the Shaw Festival's production of "Rosmersholm" in 2006 -- I am not only a regular attendee at the Festival, but Patrick Galligan, who played Rosmer, is one of my dearest friends. I thought it was a splendid production, with one outsized flaw: the director cut all references to the white horses. When I asked Patrick later why that was, he said that the director didn't think that a modern audience would accept a paranormal element like that. (I begged to differ; the generation that has made Stephen King a rich man is perfectly able to handle a blend of the realistic and the fantastic.)Thomas Anthony DiMaggionoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12657288.post-1166566375416621512006-12-19T17:12:00.000-05:002006-12-19T17:12:00.000-05:00"But I can't deny feeling by the end that Rosmersh..."But I can't deny feeling by the end that Rosmersholm is one Ibsen play that would benefit from more emotional release than he might have approved of..."<BR/><BR/>Ibsen complained that the actors of his time played his characters with too little passion, so I doubt he would have disapproved. The actors were fooled by the drawing room settings to thinking the plays were naturalistic, but there certainly were not. In his last play, "When We Dead Awaken," the sculptor says that beneath his seemingly naturalistic busts of people are the forms of animals and trolls. Ibsen was talking about his own art there.Myrhafhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16340507405537605164noreply@blogger.com