tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post5800483139980779761..comments2024-03-29T03:04:00.853-05:00Comments on Wuthering <br>Expectations: And then something came and pulled him away. It was an undertow, they said - Ibsen sure is weirdAmateur Reader (Tom)http://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-57487868775062937542014-07-16T08:49:45.228-05:002014-07-16T08:49:45.228-05:00Seen it twice - that's impressive. It would b...Seen it twice - that's impressive. It would be hard to take. With actors that good, maybe even harder.Amateur Reader (Tom)https://www.blogger.com/profile/13675275555757408496noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3383938214852108244.post-77354655073306546192014-07-16T08:40:17.618-05:002014-07-16T08:40:17.618-05:00The last act of Little Eyolf is awkward. Henry Jam...The last act of Little Eyolf is awkward. Henry James, for one, was most disappointed by it. Apparently, after seeing the play, someone commented to Ibsen that she couldn't imagine Rita running an orphange. Ibsen looked surprised - or, at least, he feigned surprise. "Do you think she would?" he asked.<br /><br />The way I read the last scene, it ends - as, indeed, Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" does - not with regeneration, but with the possibility of regeneration. In the second act, Alfred and Rita are at the lowest moral ebb; it is not possible to get lower. And if the final act doesn't dramatise a regeneration, it dramatises at least their recognition of where they stand.<br /><br />I have seen this play twice on stage (both times in very small auditoria),; and there was a very fine BBC production from the 1980s with Diana Rigg and Antony Hopkins. This is for me the most harrowing of Ibsen's plays. How, I wondered, could Ibsen have expected a paying audience to put themselves through this? I think by this stage he was writing for himself.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com