★★★★★ Rosmersholm
The reputation of greats playwrights, from W. Shakespeare down to E. O’Neill and even N. Simon, rests on their established classics. Digging through their respective archives, we inevitably find titles relegated to the sidelines. Every once in a while one of the latter is dusted off and performed, usually confirming that it belongs on the shelf but not the stage.
Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm is a case in point. This 1886 family drama was written between The Wild Duck and Hedda Gabler. In company like that, one can understand why the play fell by the historical wayside. Perhaps it is still regularly performed in Norway, but elsewhere it is little seen. But it is seen from time to time in the United Kingdom. As best we can tell, its last New York appearances were little-noticed off-Broadway productions at the Classic Stage Company in 1977 and the Pearl Theater Company in 2010. The last Broadway visit of this slice of Ibsen was a one-week stint in the mid-Depression winter of 1935, from producer/adaptor/director Eva Le Gallienne (who was likely galvanizing in the role of the crusading Rebecca West).
Rosmersholm, clearly, is a risky choice for present-day attention. Non-profits occasionally take such chances, yes. But mounting a full-scale, expensively mounted commercial production on the West End without even a tryout? And how, pray tell, do you sell a gloomy, little-known Ibsen play with a barely pronounceable title? (“ROZ-mers-home,” it seems.)
But here we have Sonia Friedman, who seems to produce half of the important plays on the U.K. boards. (In the past eight months alone, New York has seen her productions of The Ferryman, The Jungle, and Ink. And there’s also that Potter play.) She joined with director Ian Rickson in April and took the plunge, to borrow a defining image from the play. Rickson, formerly artistic director of the Royal Court, is familiar on our side of the pond for such powerful productions as Conor McPherson’s The Weir and Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem. If Friedman saw fit to throw her efforts into Rickson’s vision of Rosmersholm, perhaps there’s more to this forgotten Ibsen play than seems apparent.
And how! Rosmersholm, at the Duke of York’s Theatre, is a powerful, riveting evening in which you hang upon every word. (The new adaptation is by Duncan McMillan, who was also responsible for the recent 1984.) The play deals with what the playwright elsewhere called an “enemy of the people,” the corrupting power of the press, equality for women, and more. All of which make Rosmersholm not merely an intriguing intellectual exercise but profoundly relevant to our present time. It has been said that the play was a favorite of Freud, and one can readily appreciate why.
Leading the cast is Hayley Atwell—a two-time Olivier nominee, and likely to be in contention again this season—as Rebecca West, the lady of the Rosmer manor (home) although not the wife of heir John Rosmer (Tom Burke). Rebecca is the power behind the play, and a fitting companion to Nora, Hedda, et al. (To avoid confusion: Dame Rebecca West, the pioneering British writer, was apparently so enamored of the Ibsen heroine that she purloined the character name for her pseudonym.)
Burke is powerfully conflicted as the former pastor wracked by guilt over his family power and his wife’s death, while a crackling Giles Terera completes the central trio as the local politician (and Rosmer brother-in-law) Andreas Kroll. There are also strong contributions from Peter Wight, as the bloated remains of Rosmer’s former tutor, and Lucy Briers, as the all-knowing housekeeper.
The power of the play, though, comes from director Rickson and designer Rae Smith. The set is a marvel: a washed-out shell of a grand room that—once the shutters are opened and the dust cloths removed from the furnishings and familial portraits—turns out to be very grand (but decayed) indeed. The lighting by Neil Austin plays a large part in helping Rickson and Smith achieve their effects. Let it be added that they have a major surprise for the audience at the final curtain, but we’re not going to “spill” it (again borrowing an Ibsen image from the play).
So mark this as a happy case of unearthing a forgotten work by an old master and discovering a masterwork. Might one of our New York non-profits take a flyer on Rosmersholm? Lincoln Center Theater? Manhattan Theatre Club? A tough, expensive sell, likely. But this production is eerily relevant and altogether terrific.
★★★ Rutherford and Son
The National Theatre, meanwhile, has another long-obscure family drama about adult children of rich men who struggle with their perceived advantages. Rutherford and Son is not by a master of Ibsen’s ilk; rather, it was written in 1912 by one Githa Sowerby. (It was originally credited to K G Sowerby, to obscure the fact that the playwright was a woman.) The play crashed social norms and apparently had major impact, with successful runs that year on the West End and Broadway. Sowerby continued writing, but by the end of World War I her day seemed to have passed. She lived on anonymously into modern times (i.e., 1970), but never again approached the prominence afforded by her first play.
Rutherford and Son emerged from the shadows when it was republished in an anthology of early plays by women in 1991, leading to a ground-breaking new production at the National in 1994 under the direction of Katie Mitchell. The play has been occasionally revived in the intervening years, and now the National—which includes Rutherford and Son on its list of the 100 most influential plays of the 20th century—has seen fit to revisit it. Hoping for the same theatrical electricity as before, no doubt. Which this new mounting, directed by Polly Findlay, does not quite achieve.
Rutherford (Roger Allam) is a glass manufacturer in rural England with a big house “on the Moor.” (The playwright was born in 1876 in Gateshead, up near Newcastle on Tyne, to a family of glass manufacturers.) He has not one but two sons, the ne’er-do-well John Jr. (Sam Troughton) and ineffectual clergyman Richard (Harry Hepple). There is also strong-willed daughter, Janet, (Justine Mitchell) and John Jr’s working-class wife, Mary (Anjana Vasan), who turns out to be the strongest-willed of them all.
It is a joy to watch Allam at work as the family patriarch. A two-time Olivier winner, he is perhaps best known for creating the role of Inspector Javert in the original London production of Les Misérables. Also standing out are Mitchell and Vasan as the two daughters and Joe Armstrong as Rutherford’s working-class foreman.
The production values are typical of the National, which is to say first-rate. There is a massive set by Lizzie Clachan which almost seems to be a well-to-do British counterpart to The Ferryman. And yes, this set plays tricks to great effect. There is also a well-conceived choir of three women, singing what seem to be newly composed hymns by Kerry Andrew from a perch along the side wall of the auditorium.
While Rutherford and Son at the National is certainly effective, this new mounting does not quite rise to hoped-for heights. The action becomes more and more involving in the second act (which is actually the play’s second and third act combined), and we can see just how powerful this play could turn out to be. The first act, though, is ponderous, a haze of conversation that doesn’t grab our interest as it must. It might be unfair to compare Sowerby to Ibsen, but the long-lost Rutherford and the long-lost Rosmersholm are simultaneously on the London boards. One crackles and elicits cheers, the other is merely “interesting enough.”
Rosmersholm opened April 24, 2019, at the Duke of York’s Theatre (London) and runs through July 20. Tickets and information: rosmersholmplay.com
