I'll Take My Ibsen Straight, Thank You

Odd goings-on at The New Yorker. Theatre critic Hilton Als has some bizarro things to say about the most significant playwright of the past 150 years. As he puts it, "Henrik Ibsen: so necessary and yet so boring." If you find Ibsen boring, perhaps you shouldn't be in the theatre-reviewing business.

Oh, but Ibsen doesn't have to be boring, Als reassures us. All you have to do is hide him behind a flashy, shallow production and Hilton can bear it. But I can't put it better than Als:

...the contemporary theatre world in New York—its producers and directors—[ ] ha[s] let let us down, by failing to reimagine Ibsen’s work in a way that would make it relevant to today’s audiences. There are, of course, exceptions—for instance, Lee Breuer’s brilliant conceptualization of “A Doll’s House” at St. Ann’s Warehouse, a few seasons back, in which the male characters were played by dwarfs and many of the women were nearly six feet tall; and the Dutch director Ivo van Hove’s controversial staging of “Hedda Gabler,” complete with videos and tattoos, at the New York Theatre Workshop, last year.

Got that? Productions faithful to the actual meaning and text are boring and irrelevant. Als doesn't want Ibsen, he wants a circus.

Perhaps it would help if Als had a clue as to what Ibsen is about. He feels "musty productions" that stick to the script "obscure[ ] one of the playwright’s notable ambitions: to expose the uncomfortable truths about women and about the nature of power." Well, these are among Ibsen's themes, but we don't need six-foot women towering over dwarves to make the point clear.

Als notes "Ibsen’s writing tends to be hefty and naturalistic." A strange statement, not only because Ibsen constantly reinvented his style, but because when he was hefty he wasn't naturalistic, and when he was naturalistic, he wasn't that hefty.

When a pitcher gets tired, they put in a reliever. Perhaps when there's a new Ibsen production The New Yorker should bring in a reviewer who can stand it.

ColumbusGuy adds: Who'da thunk it? LAGuy, originalist: "Got that? Productions faithful to the actual meaning and text are boring and irrelevant. Als doesn't want Ibsen, he wants a circus."