The New Vic/BAM Harvey Theater; Brooklyn; February 21 – March 16, 2014

This New Vic production, which got raves in the West End, at the Duke of York’s, in 2012, was greeted in New York in 2014 with equal enthusiasm.

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A Twenty-First Century Ibsen: Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s Ibsen-Saga; Oslo (Black Box Teater), Bergen (Det Norske Teater), Berlin (Prater Theater, Volksbühne); 2006-2013

Over the past seven years, Vegard Vinge and Ida Müller’s productions of Ibsen’s plays have deservedly caught the attention of Western Europe’s experimental theatre scene. Their five works to date—A Doll House (2006), Ghosts (2007), The Wild Duck (2009), John Gabriel Borkman (2011), and 12-Spartenhaus (an adaptation of An Enemy of the People, 2013)—are a sprawling, interconnected series known as the Ibsen-Saga.

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Théâtre de la Madeleine; Paris; February 16 – May 27, 2010

Michel Fau’s Maison de Poupée – Ibsen’s A Doll House in Terje Sinding’s widely used French translation – deliberately made use of exaggeration and melodrama, yet managed to render the story of Nora’s realization convincingly. Purportedly guided by the well-known Ibsenism, “Life is not sad—life is ridiculous—and that’s what makes it unbearable,” the production was witty and captivating, both because of and despite its courting of the absurd.

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A Jewish Theater Company ; New York; March 16, 20 and 23, 2011 (11, 15 Shushan Purim and 18 of Adar II, 5771)

In 2010, Yoni Oppenheim, Jesse Freedman, and Avi Soroka created A Jewish Theater Company, the first professional Jewish theatre company in New York dedicated to Shabbat-observing artists. This explains the unconventional performance times of their production of A Doll House, on two Wednesdays and a Sunday, avoiding the Shabbat, which prohibits deliberate physical activity, including, of course, theatrical performing, on Fridays and Saturdays.

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Dollhouse, by Rebecca Gilman (based on Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll House)
The Guthrie Theater; Minneapolis; May 22–July 11, 2010

When I saw Gilman’s Dollhouse at the Guthrie, I was both entertained and challenged, but I also had the feeling that little would stick in my memory. Yet I also had a hunch that perhaps this was the whole point of Gilman’s play and Wendy C. Goldberg’s direction: to show how forgettable it all is, the lives and times of Generation X.

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Nora or A Doll House; Theatre Oberhausen, Fall 2010/Theatertreffen; Berlin; May 15 and 16, 2011
The Wild Duck; Off-off-off-Ibsen Festival, Oslo, 2010/The Prater; Berlin; May-July, 2011

Ibsen was at one time regularly represented in the Berlin Theatertreffen, the annual spring festival which offers ten productions selected by a jury as the most outstanding of the previous year in Germany, Austria, and German-speaking Switzerland.

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John Gabriel Borkman and An Enemy of the People; Berlin Theatertreffen; May, 2012
A Doll House; Maxim Gorki Theatre; Berlin; May 4 – 21, 2012

 The situation of professional productions of Ibsen is today totally different in America and Germany, and neither tradition can be said to be very encouraging for those who love and admire the dramatist. In major United States professional theatres, Ibsen is simply no longer done. The productions are imported from elsewhere, usually England or Australia, and these, though often well acted, are both infrequent and highly conventional. In Germany, the situation is almost reversed, but not to the advantage of Ibsen.

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Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral; Santiago, Chile; June – August 2012

Ibsen is not nearly so frequently represented on Chilean stages as he is in neighboring Argentina. In the new century I was able to find records of only two productions in Santiago, a 2004 Lady from the Sea, sponsored by the Norwegian Cultural Center, and a production at the theatre of the University of Santiago of Enemy. On June 15, 2012, Santiago’s Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center added to this number with an adaptation of A Doll House, entitled Persiguiendo a Nora Helmer (In Pursuit of Nora Helmer) which enjoyed a run through most of the winter season.

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