Category: Henrik Ibsen

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir presents, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE, by Melissa Reeves, after Henrik Ibsen, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St, Surry Hills. 7th October – 4th November. Melbourne writer, Melissa Reeves has adapted Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 play, AN ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE. It has been transposed and adapted to contemporary Australian times: 2018. It is a very faithful set of adjustments and is essentially true to Ibsen’s content and spirit – both his politics and his humour. The original play concerns two siblings, one a Doctor and the other a Politician – he is the mayor of the…

Photo by Brett Boardman Belvoir St Theatre presents, Ghosts, by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Eamon Flack, from a literal translation by Charlotte Barslund, in the Upstairs Theatre. 20 September – 22 October. Belvoir presents Henrik Ibsen’s play, GHOSTS, in an adaptation by the Director Eamon Flack. It is an agile and careful, faithfully respectful version (unlike his recent production of THE ROVER), in which the actors, so the program notes tell us, were as participatory in its final language choices, based on a literal version of the play by Charlotte Barslund, as was the Director/Adaptor. It is presented in a…

Photo by Manuel Harlan The Old Vic presents THE MASTER BUILDER, by Henrik Ibsen. A new adaptation by David Hare, at The Old Vic, London, U.K. 23 Jan – 19 March, 2016. According to the Old Vic program notes, by Nick Curtis, on this production of Henrik Ibsen’s THE MASTER BUILDER: Today, (Ibsen) is the second most performed playwright in the world, after Shakespeare, and seen as the inheritor to Shakespeare’s mantle as a poetic explorer of the human condition. THE MASTER BUILDER is a play not often seen in Australia. Henrik Ibsen has, for me, three distinct phases in…

Belvoir presents, NORA, by Kit Brookman and Anne-Louise Sarks, after A DOLL’S HOUSE, by Henrik Ibsen, in the Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir St Theatre, Surry Hills. 13 August – 14 September. This is a new Australian work written, jointly, by Kit Brookman and Anne-Louise Sarks, after, or, seemingly, instigated by reflections on A DOLL’S HOUSE by Henrik Ibsen. To diarise this new work, it might be more useful to ignore the Ibsen original (for a while), and just regard what we saw on stage. This is a two act play (with a 30 minute interval – to facilitate a scene change – modern…

Photo by by Ellis Parrinder Belvoir presents HEDDA GABLER, adapted by Adena Jacobs, from the play by Henrik Ibsen, at Belvoir St Upstairs Theatre, 28 June – 3 August. Adena Jacobs has adapted and Directed Henrik Ibsen’s great play, HEDDA GABLER (1890), into an 85 minute imagining of actor Ash Flanders playing Hedda that had, some time in her preparation, planning, “suddenly” allowed her to perceive “the poetry of Ibsen’s play anew – the yearning of escape, the terror of difference, a person squeezing out of their environment, the paradox of freedom.” Ash Flanders is a Melbourne-based theatre-maker. In 2006 he…

Belvoir presents THE WILD DUCK by Simon Stone with Chris Ryan after Henrik Ibsen in the Upstairs Theatre. THE WILD DUCK written by Simon Stone, also the Director, with Chris Ryan, after Henrik Ibsen’s play (1884) of the same name, is a new contemporary Australian play. This adaptation and re-writing, like Mr Stone’s other Ibsen inspired play (with Thomas Henning), THE ONLY CHILD (from Ibsen’s LITTLE EYOLF), as texts, presage a very good night in the theatre. Both of these texts are very interesting. This one better than the other, I felt. And while, if one is a committed Ibsenite,…