Rosmersholm: rollicking politics linking Ibsen to 2024
12 Aug 2024 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

Propaganda disguised as news. Fake news. Scandal. Secrets. Secrets revealed. Secrets buried. Suicide. Shattered ideals. Cries for equality. A ruling class clinging to power. Deals brokered for power and financial gain. Slumlords. Endless rain. Bleakness. Rosmersholm could easily pass as contemporary, it is set on the eve of a pivotal election between the right and the left, but is actually from 1886. Henrik Ibsen, in an adaptation by Duncan Macmillan, revels in the political machinations of the main characters, but wisely lathers it in a soapy layer of intrigue, sexual repression and an initial series of reveals worthy of a murder mystery. There is also a supernatural element with a white horse that appears when death is imminent, and an old decaying house full of looming malevolent portraits. Director Chris Abraham (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Uncle Vanya, Mixtape, Towards Youth, We Are Not Alone, The Wedding Party) doesn't belabour the links to today's political turmoil, but he doesn't have to, it is blatantly obvious to the point of garnering rueful laughter. Rosmersholm translates as "the house of Rosmer" and it rivals the House of Usher and the race to the White House.

Jonathon Young (King Lear, Queen Goneril, Knives in Hens, Tear the Curtain!) is John Rosmer, a pastor who has lost his faith and as the last of the powerful and wealthy Rosmers, has gained an inconvenient social conscience. However, mourning the death of his wife, he has not taken any action on either seismic change in his thinking, hoping that staying neutral will absolve him of wielding influence. Young moves from passive to firebrand to comically inept to self-consciously tragic with a seething passion that is palpable. His conversion has been encouraged by his late wife's companion Rebecca West, who comes complete with sordid secrets, suppressed desire and righteous anger. Virgilia Griffith (Queen Goneril, King Lear, Betrayal, Iphigenia and the Furies, Harlem Duet, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Wedding Party, They Say He Fell) plays Rebecca as a woman well ahead of her time, eager and capable of putting her ideals into play. As a woman, Rebecca is constrained by corsets that almost bind Griffith's arms to her sides, and long skirts that make a horrifying sound as they drag across the rough-hewn boards of the house. Within those confines, and eventually exploding out of them, Griffith is a emotional powder keg.

Adamantly opposed to Rosmer's conversion is Ben Carlson's Governor Andreas Kroll. He is also the brother of Rosmer's dead wife and the one responsible for hiring Rebecca. Carlson is just oily enough to let the duplicitousness show through, and in a remarkable display of alternative facts, he is frighteningly convincing and charismatic. This central ever shifting triangle is supplemented by Diego Matamoros (A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney, Post-Democracy, Little Menace, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Royale) as a dishevelled and disheartened former professor, and Beau Dixon (The Shape of Home, Uncovered: The Music of Dolly Parton, Ghost Quartet, The Father, Harlem Duet, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Hamlet) as a victim of Rosmer's persecution and now the publisher of the local 'radical' newspaper. Both are magnetic performers who explode in their supporting roles to the point that, in a less fast-moving production, one would want to see much more of them. Kate Hennig (Mother's Daughter, The Virgin Trial, The Audience) is the omnipresent droll housekeeper Mrs Helseth who knows far more than she admits. Rounding out the cast as the house staff Sturla Alvsvag, Alicia Richardson (The Baby), and Norman Yeung who are potent symbols of what the debate and battles are about.

The powerhouse cast is unleashed on a deceptively simple set by Joshua Quinlan where the water metaphors get a surprising, to the point of earning gasps and curiosity, workout. Realism is the order of the day, with seemingly real food on the tables and candles that require a second glance. There is room for the cast to move and that they stay in motion, except for intense moments towards the end when we are already involved, allows the more long-winded speeches to breathe and not suffocate. The fast pace, with revelation piling on revelation, also allows us to overlook several questions that the production never answers. The very modernity that links Rosmersholm to 2024 explicitly, is confusing in a production set in 1886 if one stops to think. We'll have to take Ibsen's word that a proto-feminist like Rebecca West could exist in that time period. There is also a tragic lack of passion in the text. The Rosmers, as Mrs Helseth states, getting a hearty laugh from the audience, "Never laugh." Rosmer and West's relationship is stated as platonic and one of the suggested motives for Rosmer's wife's suicide is hinted to be his lack of enthusiasm for sex. For a moment it seemed we would be veering into Tennessee Williams territory but, alas, Ibsen's focus is on politics. And his vision of the results of love result in a devastatingly bleak finale accompanied by a stunning special effect. So 2024.