The League of Youth (Norwegian : De unges Forbund) is a play by Henrik Ibsen finished in early May 1869. [1] It was Ibsen's first play in colloquial prose and marks a turning point in his style towards realism and away from verse. [1] It was widely considered Ibsen's most popular play in nineteenth-century Norway. [2] Though rooted in serious events of the time, the play was lauded for its natural and witty dialogue, cynical humour and farcical intrigue. [3]
Taking a different tack than Ibsen's earlier political play The Pretenders , The League of Youth features a protagonist Stensgaard, who poses as a political idealist and gathers a new party around him, the 'League of Youth', and aims to eliminate corruption among the "old" guard and bring his new "young" group to power. In scheming to be elected, he immerses himself in social and sexual intrigue, culminating in such complexity that at the end of the play all the women whom he has at one time planned to marry reject him, his plans for election fail, and he is run out of town.
The initial evening's stage production saw loud applause and glowing reviews by critics in the papers. [1] However, by the second performance, both Conservatives and Liberals were saying it was an attack on their party. [1] When both sides showed up for the second performance, a loud ruckus forced the manager to plead for calm and there were continual interruptions. [1] At the play's end, the gas lights were turned off to force the unruly mob out of the theater with fighting continuing into the streets. [1]
Though popular and often produced in Scandinavia it has rarely been staged elsewhere. [1] There have been three known productions in the UK: on a Sunday evening in 1900 a single performance by the Stage Society with Granville Barker as Erik, Robert Farquharson as Bastian and Edward Knoblock as a waiter. [1] The first ever professional production of the play, in a version by Andy Barrett (published by Nick Hern Books), premiered on 13 May 2011 at Nottingham Playhouse. In 2016 London based theatre company Riot Act produced a critically acclaimed modern adaption (by playwright Ashley Pearson) in collaboration with Theatre N16 in South London. The production gave the play a New Order-scored aggressive resuscitation which mirrored modern UK politics and was directed by Whit Hertford. In the United States, a professional production (adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher) was produced at The Commonweal Theatre in Lanesboro, Minnesota in 2016.
Ibsen biographer Robert Ferguson argues that the play is funny because it is liberated from Ibsen's later famous preoccupation with the power of symbol and making every line relevant to the main issue. As Ferguson says, "This is Ibsen's most Holbergian play, a comedy on human weakness which does not, like some of his later plays on weakness, end in the punishment of the weak." [4]
It was thought at the time Ibsen may have modeled his character Stensgaard on the rival dramatist and Liberal party leader Bjornstjerne Bjornson, however Ibsen denied any such connection and wrote a letter of apology to Bjornson, but it would be eleven years before their former friendship would be healed. [1]
The central character Stensgaard was in fact based on the real-life figure of Herman Bagger, an outsider who arrived in the town of Skien in the 1830s, dabbled in journalism, was elected to political office and was even involved with a scandal involving an IOU note. [1] Other real-life caricatures include that of Daniel Hejre, which was an affectionate portrait of Ibsen's father. [1] Aslaksen the printer was based on a friend of Ibsen's from youth named N.F. Axelsen who printed the paper The Man, which Ibsen had edited for nine months. [1]
A Doll's House is a three-act play written by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It premiered at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 21 December 1879, having been published earlier that month. The play is set in a Norwegian town circa 1879.
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.
Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson was a Norwegian writer who received the 1903 Nobel Prize in Literature "as a tribute to his noble, magnificent and versatile poetry, which has always been distinguished by both the freshness of its inspiration and the rare purity of its spirit". The first Norwegian Nobel laureate, he was a prolific polemicist and extremely influential in Norwegian public life and Scandinavian cultural debate. Bjørnson is considered to be one of the four great Norwegian writers, alongside Ibsen, Lie, and Kielland. He is also celebrated for his lyrics to the Norwegian national anthem, "Ja, vi elsker dette landet". The composer Fredrikke Waaler based a composition for voice and piano (Spinnersken) on a text by Bjørnson, as did Anna Teichmüller.
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.
Peer Gynt is a five-act play in verse by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen published in 1876. Written in Norwegian, it is one of the most widely performed Norwegian plays. Ibsen believed Per Gynt, the Norwegian fairy tale on which the play is loosely based, to be rooted in fact, and several of the characters are modelled after Ibsen's own family, notably his parents Knud Ibsen and Marichen Altenburg. He was also generally inspired by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen's collection of Norwegian fairy tales, published in 1845.
Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882 in Chicago, Illinois, 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 fared better, and is 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.
The Almeida Theatre, opened in 1980, is a 325-seat producing house with an international reputation, which takes its name from the street on which it is located, off Upper Street, in the London Borough of Islington. The theatre produces a diverse range of drama. Successful plays are often transferred to West End theatres.
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.
Emperor and Galilean is a play written by Henrik Ibsen. Although it is one of the writer's lesser known plays, on several occasions Henrik Ibsen called Emperor and Galilean his major work. Emperor and Galilean is written in two complementary parts with five acts in each part and is Ibsen's longest play.
The National Theatre in Oslo is one of Norway's largest and most prominent venues for performance of dramatic arts.
Suzannah Ibsen was a Norwegian woman who was the wife of playwright and poet Henrik Ibsen and mother of noted politician Sigurd Ibsen.
The Pretenders is a dramatic play by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.
Christiania Theatre, or Kristiania Theatre, was Norway's finest stage for the spoken drama from 4 October 1836 to 1 September 1899. It was located at Bankplassen by the Akershus Fortress in central Christiania. It was the first lasting public theatre in Norway and the national stage of Norway and of Oslo during the 19th century.
Egil Næss Eide was a Norwegian silent film actor and director. He appeared in eighteen films between 1913 and 1935, and worked at the National Theatre between 1899 and 1939.
Anna Magdalene Thoresen, née Kragh was a Danish-born Norwegian poet, novelist, short story writer and playwright. She is said to have inspired a number of other writers to model characters after her. Her stepdaughter, Suzannah Ibsen, was married to Henrik Ibsen.
Agnes Mowinckel was a Norwegian actress and theatre director. Born in Bergen into a distinguished family, she became Norway's first professional stage director. A pioneer in bringing painters to the theatre, she used light as an artistic element, and engaged contemporary composers. She took part in theatrical experiments, worked at small stages in Oslo, and founded her own theatre.
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.
Marichen Cornelia Martine Altenburg was the mother of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and is known as the model for several characters in some of Ibsen's most famous plays, including Åse in Peer Gynt.
