After repeated curtain calls, the cast was joined by the smiling director, which only added to the uproar of the audience.  “The theatre doesn’t get any better than this,” the Berliner Zeitung quoted one member of the audience as concluding, and the response suggested that this view was widely held.  Director and actors made this a Rosmersholm generally considered to be the best German production of the play in this generation, and perhaps the non-German-speaking world could be included as well.  It was certainly by far the most satisfying interpretation of this challenging work that I have ever been fortunate enough to see.

 CUNY Graduate Center

For Information on the 10th International Ibsen Conference, June 1-7, 2003 click here

           Ivan Talijancic’s Wax Factory production of The Lady from the Sea is, to my knowledge, the first installation performance version of an Ibsen play in the United States (and perhaps in the world).  The first workshop production was in November of 2000, and the second, which I saw, took place on June 29 and 30, 2001. A specific-site installation piece, the production was designed for the space at The Old American Can Factory in the Gowanus/Carrol Gardens section of Brooklyn.  The program notes that the production “presents a collection of ideas and possible departure points to be pursued in the completed adaptation,” which is planned for next year. The installation is currently composed of 12 sites, indoor and outdoor.  Some sites include live actors, some are completely canned (video or film), and some are both.  The program instructs the audience to use the signs posted throughout the large ex-factory building as guideposts, and notes: “There is no preset order to follow.  You will have 45 minutes to visit and then follow the ushers’ and the performers’ instructions [for the final performance outside]. Each installation is on a continuous loop, so feel free to visit sites more than once.  An operator will be running the elevator [inside], so you may want to use the stairs if you want to reach a specific floor.”
            The high tech installation was sometimes elaborate, occasionally makeshift—one site wasn’t working the night I saw it—and extremely ambitious.  Ivan Talijancic, who conceived and directed the piece, had obviously spent much time and thought on Ibsen’s play, on both its surface and subliminal texts, and the result was fascinating. 

Site 1, called “ghosts,”devoted to the Hilda-Lyngstrand sub-plot, pulled out all the stops to suggest the strong macabre aspect of the relation.  Dion Doulis as a very ill Lyngstrand lying on a mat (I thought he represented a corpse at first) is heavily made-up to look dead, with his head shaven under a sinister-looking transparent plastic hood. Celine Bacque as a narcissistic, loudly whining Hilda, has a thick French accent (real, it turns out), is barefoot, and wears a bathing suit and bathing cap, the latter over a shaved head.  She puts on lipstick in front of three rectangular mirrors, with a Victorian-looking tiny night stand at her side.  Bacque and Doulis speak snatches of Ibsen’s dialogue.  Bacque dons black as she recites the lines about the young, grieving bride. With her drawn-out gestures, slow delivery and her imperious, sinister manner, Bacque embodies perfectly the psychotic child-woman that some commentators have seen in Ibsen’s Hilda.  The whole scene, distinctly surreal, teases out every perverse implication of the Hilda-Lyngstrand sub-plot.