John Gabriel Borkman is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work.
John Gabriel Borkman is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work.
The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to speculate with his investors' money. The action of the play takes place eight years after Borkman's release when John Gabriel Borkman, Mrs. Borkman, and her twin sister Ella Rentheim fight over young Erhart Borkman's future. Though John Gabriel Borkman continues the line of naturalism and social commentary that marks Ibsen's work over the preceding thirty years, the final act suggests a new phase for the playwright which was brought to fruition in his final symbolic work When We Dead Awaken .
The Norwegian historian Halvdan Koht stated that the play could have been based on an incident that Ibsen might have recorded from an earlier period in his life around 1851, the attempted suicide of an army officer who had been accused of embezzlement. [1]
In 1925 Eva Le Gallienne produced, directed and performed in a successful run of the play in repertory with The Master Builder at the Princess Theatre, New York City. This was a critical step in her creation of the Civic Repertory Theatre in 1926. [2] [3]
In 2010, a revival of the play was performed in the Abbey Theatre as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival. In a new version by Frank McGuinness directed by James Macdonald, it featured actor Alan Rickman as John Gabriel Borkman, Fiona Shaw as his wife Gunhild and Lindsay Duncan as Ella. [4] [5] The play had previously been performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1928. [6] In 2011, the production moved to New York and received mixed reviews. [7]
In 2015, David Eldridge adapted the play into a two-part production directed by Helen Perry and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on March 8 and 15, starring David Threlfall as Borkman, Susannah Harker as Ella Rentheim, Gillian Bevan as Mrs. Borkman, Philip Jackson as Vilhelm Foldal, Luke Newberry as Erhart Borkman. [8]
In August 2017, as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival a new production in English based on a contemporary translation and adaptation by Fox and Orchid Theatre Company and played by just two actors portraying seven characters was performed. It was entitled "(My Father) John Gabriel Borkman".
In 2022 the play was performed in a new translation and updated to a more modern period at the Bridge Theatre, London, with Simon Russell Beale in the title role. [9]
Ibsen was a critical figure in early modern Japanese drama, particularly the Shingeki movement, and Borkman was a particularly well received play with several contemporary translations, including by Mori Ōgai and Takuboku Ishikawa. The 1909 production of Borkman at Osanai Kaoru's Free Theater (Jiyū Gekijō) was staged in a way to re-contextualize the play to focus on the character of Erhart. [10]
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller was an English film and stage actress who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly 60 years. Writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took command of the screen whenever she appeared on film". Despite many notable film performances, Hiller chose to remain primarily a stage actress.
Hedda Gabler is a play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The world premiere was staged on 31 January 1891 at the Residenztheater in Munich. Ibsen himself was in attendance, although he remained back-stage. The play has been canonized as a masterpiece within the genres of literary realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama. Ibsen mainly wrote realistic plays until his forays into modern drama. Hedda Gabler dramatizes the experiences of the title character, Hedda, the daughter of a general, who is trapped in a marriage and a house that she does not want. Overall, the title character for Hedda Gabler is considered one of the great dramatic roles in theater. The year following its publication, the play received negative feedback and reviews. Hedda Gabler has been described as a female variation of Hamlet.
William Archer was a Scottish author, theatre critic, and English spelling reformer based, for most of his career, in London. He was an early advocate of the plays of Henrik Ibsen, and a friend and advocate of George Bernard Shaw.
Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in Danish and published in 1881, and first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, US, performed in Danish.
The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It explores the complexities of truth and illusion through the story of a family torn apart by secrets and the intrusion of an idealistic outsider. It focuses on the Ekdal family, whose fragile peace is shattered by Gregers Werle, an idealist who insists on exposing hidden truths, leading to tragic consequences. The play was written in a realistic style, but literary scholars have pointed out the play's kinship with symbolism. It blends themes such as deception, betrayal, and the disillusionment of modern life with moments of comedy and satire, and is considered the first modern masterpiece in the genre of tragicomedy. The Wild Duck and Rosmersholm are "often to be observed in the critics' estimates vying with each other as rivals for the top place among Ibsen's works".
The Master Builder is a play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Love's Comedy is a comedy by Henrik Ibsen. It was first published on 29 December 1862. As a result of being branded an "immoral" work in the press, the Christiania Theatre would not dare to stage it at first. "The play aroused a storm of hostility," Ibsen wrote in its preface three years later, "more violent and more widespread than most books could boast of having evoked in a community the vast majority of whose members commonly regard matters of literature as being of small concern." The only person who approved of it at the time, Ibsen later said, was his wife. He revised the play in 1866, in preparation for its publication "as a Christmas book," as he put it. His decision to make it more appealing to Danish readers by removing many of its specifically Norwegian words has been taken as an early instance of the expression of his contempt for the contemporary Norwegian campaign to purge the language of its foreign influences.
Rafe Joseph Spall is an English actor.
Eva Le Gallienne was a British-born American stage actress, producer, director, translator, and author. A Broadway star by age 21, in 1926 she left Broadway behind to found the Civic Repertory Theatre, where she served as director, producer, and lead actress. Noted for her boldness and idealism, she was a pioneering figure in the American theater, setting the stage for the Off-Broadway and regional theater movements that swept the country later in the 20th century.
Susannah Harker is an English film, television, and theatre actress. She was nominated for a BAFTA TV Award in 1990 for her role as Mattie Storin in House of Cards. She played Jane Bennet in the 1995 TV adaptation of Pride and Prejudice.
The Lady from the Sea is a play written in 1888 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen inspired by the ballad Agnete og Havmanden. The drama introduces the character of Hilde Wangel who is again portrayed in Ibsen's later play The Master Builder. The character portrayal of Hilde Wangel has been portrayed twice in contemporary film, most recently in the 2014 film titled A Master Builder.
Gregan McMahon, CBE was an Australian actor and theatrical director and producer.
Catiline or Catilina was Henrik Ibsen's first play. It was written during winter 1848–49 and first performed under Ibsen's name on 3 December 1881 at the Nya Teatern, Stockholm, Sweden. The first performance of Catilina in Norway not under Ibsen's pseudonym was at Det Nye Teater in Oslo on 24 August 1935.
Michael Leverson Meyer was an English translator, biographer, journalist and dramatist who specialised in Scandinavian literature.
The Théâtre de Paris is a theatre located at 15, rue Blanche in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. It includes a second smaller venue, the Petit Théâtre de Paris.
Zuleikha Chaudhari is a theatre director and lighting designer based in New Delhi and Mumbai, India. She is also a Visiting Faculty at The Dramatic Art and Design Academy, New Delhi.
Ilona Aczél was a Hungarian actress at the National Theatre in Budapest.
The Bridge Theatre is a commercial theatre near Tower Bridge in London that opened in October 2017. It was developed by Nick Starr and Nicholas Hytner as the home of the London Theatre Company, which they founded following their tenancy as executive director and artistic director, respectively, at the National Theatre.
Else Lehmann was a German stage actress.
Alfred Jørgen Gjems Selmer was a Norwegian actor.
John Gabriel Borkman public domain audiobook at LibriVox 