Ibsen

Just when his literature professor was lecturing on the plays of Henrik Ibsen, a touring production of Ghosts, starring the legendary Alla Nazimova, came to campus.

"Ibsen has informed so many playwrights of today," she says.

Given the close relationship--from Ibsen's own time--between 'modernity' and the rise of the feminist movement, it is no surprise that almost half the chapters deal with A Doll's House (and to a lesser extent Hedda Gabler).

Ibsen's work examines the realities that lay behind these facades, turning a savagely critical eye towards the morality of the day.

Aday based the VLT adaptation on a well received 1998 translation of the Ibsen play by British playwright and film director Christopher Hampton, who actually worked from a German version of the script written by the playwright himself.

In classic Ibsen fashion, the play opened with Shaktam Lakpa and Shakhenbi arguing about how their marriage seemed to be falling apart.

This thought-provoking life course focuses on reflecting the deep ecological perspectives which Ibsen endeavors to express in this play.

Robert Pickavance's Arnold Rubek, an ageing sculptor who has fame, fortune and a compliant young wife - but no real joy in being alive, is Ibsen's mouthpiece.

Paul Binding's mostly engaging book is marred by a surprisingly idealist thesis: Ibsen's artists should be judged by their ability' to see and express this truth: that every woman not only contains the universe but constitutes the universe in herself' (p.

"With this, what we are finding is although Ibsen didn't approach this as his last play, he was trying to explore something new.

And then there's the classical actress who played opposite Ralph Fiennes in Ibsen's Brand for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and whose other notable stage credits include Volpone and Don Carlos, also for the RSC, The Relapse and Cyrano at the National Theatre and a lot of Shakespeare at the Manchester Royal Exchange, Sheffield Crucible and elsewhere.

DULL, mysterious, unchaste" read The Daily Graphic's review of Ibsen's The Master Builder when the play received its London premiere in 1893.