Little Eyolf (Lille Eyolf in the original Norwegian title) is an 1894 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was first performed in Norwegian on December 3, 1894, at a 9 a.m. matinee performance in the Haymarket Theatre in London. [1]
Little Eyolf (Lille Eyolf in the original Norwegian title) is an 1894 play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play was first performed in Norwegian on December 3, 1894, at a 9 a.m. matinee performance in the Haymarket Theatre in London. [1]
Little Eyolf tells the story of the Allmers family. At the outset of the play, the father, Alfred, has just returned from a trip to the mountains. While there, he resolved to focus foremost on raising his son Eyolf, rather than continue work on his book, Human Responsibility. Eyolf, though described as having "beautiful, intelligent eyes", [2] is paralyzed in one of his legs, and thus his life is a sheltered one. He craves more than anything else to live the life of a normal boy, but his father knows that this is not possible. As such, Alfred wants to turn Eyolf towards loftier, intellectual pursuits.
The Allmers household is soon visited by the Rat-Wife, a woman capable of enchanting rodents into following her into the sea, where they drown. She leaves when informed that her services are unnecessary, and Eyolf follows her, unnoticed by Alfred, his wife Rita, and Alfred's sister Asta. Once Eyolf is gone, Alfred details his plan for being a better father to Eyolf and allowing him to attain happiness. In the course of his description, they are visited by Borghejm, an engineer, who is interested in Asta. While Asta and Borghejm walk outside, Rita's possessiveness of Alfred is revealed, during which she even wishes that Eyolf had never been born, as he diverts Alfred's attention from herself. Rita and Alfred's conversation is interrupted by the return of Asta and Borghejm, and then followed by sounds of shouts down by the sea, which reveal that Eyolf has drowned after following the Rat-Wife into the sea.
Down by the sea, Alfred mourns and is comforted by Asta. Rita and Borghejm follow, and once again Borghejm removes Asta from the action allowing for confrontation between Rita and Alfred. In the course of their conversation, Rita talks more about needing Alfred wholly while Alfred reveals that he married Rita in order to be able to better Asta's life. They also each blame each other for Eyolf's injury (as a baby, he fell off a table while they were making love), with Alfred accusing Rita of "luring me in to you", [3] distracting him from his duty to watch over Eyolf.
Borghejm and Asta return, and Borghejm is once again unsuccessful at convincing Asta to marry him. However, when asked by Alfred and Rita to stay with them and take Eyolf's place, somehow allowing them to ease their guilt and avoid the problems in their relationship, Asta decides to marry Borghejm and follow him north. With Alfred indicating a continued unwillingness to be the husband Rita desires, she shares her new plan to try to better the lives of the poorer children who live down by the sea. In this, Alfred sees something positive again in Rita, and Alfred decides to remain, so that together they can atone for their mistakes.
A production of Little Eyolf was featured in the BBC television anthology series Play of the Month in July 1982. It stars Anthony Hopkins as Alfred, Diana Rigg as Rita and Peggy Ashcroft in the role of the Rat Wife. [4]
Samuel Adamson's Mrs Affleck, which translates the action to the 1950s and set it on the English coast in Kent, premiered at the National Theatre in January 2009 to mixed reviews. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Cast credits are Claire Skinner as Rita Affleck, Angus Wright as Alfred Affleck, and Naomi Frederick as Audrey Affleck. [10]
The 1989 film Jazeere, directed by Indian director Govind Nihlani, is a modernized take on the story. This Hindi version starred stalwarts like Ratna Pathak, Rajit Kapoor, Mita Vashisht, and Irrfan Khan. Vanraj Bhatia scored the background music for the film.
The 2009 film The Frost, directed by Spanish director Ferran Audí, is a modernized take on the story.
The 2016 Edinburgh Festival performance Little Wolfie, directed by Norwegian director Invi Brenna, is a contemporary adaptation for the 21st century.
Henrik Johan Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include Brand, Peer Gynt, An Enemy of the People, Emperor and Galilean, A Doll's House, Hedda Gabler, Ghosts, The Wild Duck, When We Dead Awaken, Rosmersholm, and The Master Builder. Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and A Doll's House was the world's most performed play in 2006.
William Archer was a Scottish writer, 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 supporter of George Bernard Shaw.
Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written and published in 1881, and first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, US in a production by a Danish company on tour. Like many of Ibsen's plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th-century morality. Because of its subject matter, which includes religion, venereal disease, incest, and euthanasia, it immediately generated strong controversy and negative criticism. Since then, the play has come to be considered a "great play" that historically holds a position of "immense importance". Theater critic Maurice Valency wrote in 1963, "From the standpoint of modern tragedy Ghosts strikes off in a new direction.... Regular tragedy dealt mainly with the unhappy consequences of breaking the moral code. Ghosts, on the contrary, deals with the consequences of not breaking it."
The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It 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".
Aurélien-Marie Lugné, known by his stage and pen name Lugné-Poe, was a French actor, theatre director, and scenic designer. He founded the landmark Paris theatre company, the Théâtre de l'Œuvre, which produced experimental work by French Symbolist writers and painters at the end of the nineteenth century. Like his contemporary, theatre pioneer André Antoine, he gave the French premieres of works by the leading Scandinavian playwrights Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson.
Love's Comedy is a comedy by Henrik Ibsen. It was first published on 31 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.
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.
Emanuel Reicher was a German actor. He was father to actors Ernst Reicher and Frank Reicher and actress Hedwiga Reicher.
The Pretenders is a dramatic play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Samuel Adamson is an Australian playwright and screenwriter who has lived and worked in the UK since 1991. He was born in Adelaide and lives in London.
Michael Leverson Meyer was an English translator, biographer, journalist and dramatist who specialised in Scandinavian literature.
Avril Elgar Williams was an English stage, radio and television actress.
Michael Elliott, OBE was an English theatre and television director. He was a founding director of the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester.
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.
Kristine Cathrine Ploug (1760–1837), known as Aunt Ploug, was a relative of playwright Henrik Ibsen, cited as the influence of some of the characters in his plays, such as The Rat-Wife in Little Eyolf. She was a sister of Johan Andreas Altenburg, Ibsen's maternal grandfather, and as such the aunt of Marichen Altenburg and great-aunt of Henrik Ibsen. She lived with her brother from around 1799, following the death of her husband, and after Johan Andreas Altenburg's death, she lived with the Ibsen family. She died at Venstøp in 1837.
Ibsen is a Norwegian family of Danish extraction. Its most famous members are playwright Henrik Ibsen, his son, statesman Sigurd Ibsen, and grandson, pioneer film director Tancred Ibsen. Several other family members have been noted artists.
Betty Mathilde Hennings née Schnell (1850–1939) was a Danish actress who entered the Royal Danish Theatre as a ballet dancer but in 1870 turned to acting, first performing in Molière's The School for Wives. She later became known for her roles in the plays of Henrik Ibsen, especially as Nora in A Doll's House.
Kåre Conradi is a Norwegian actor.
The 39th Street Theatre was a playhouse in New York City located at the corner of 39th Street and Broadway. Originally called Nazimova's 39th Street Theatre after the actress Alla Nazimova, it was in operation from 1910 to 1925 when it was demolished to make way for an office building. Throughout its existence, it was owned by the Shubert family. Its architect was William Albert Swasey, who had designed or remodelled several other Broadway theatres for the family.
Johanne Voss was a Norwegian actress from Bergen.
is [Claire Skinner's] riveting portrait of a trapped woman enough to justify Marianne Elliott's strong, tense production?
Ibsen's 1894 play isn't often performed and it's not hard to see why.
if you are feeling even marginally low in spirits, this is a play to avoid like the plague.
Laden with fine writing, a keen dramatic intelligence and good acting, the show still never catches fire.
Little Eyolf public domain audiobook at LibriVox 