![]() ![]() The great Swedish ensemble delivered their lines (in their native language) as though the text was contemporary. With the trappings of realism gone, Bergman then created a stage reality in which–reinforced by ambiguous costumes–past and present merged. The specific nineteenth-century milieu was represented by huge two-dimensional fragmentary photographic blowups of vintage domestic scenes that were iconic rather than illusionistic. Bergman’s recuperation moved in opposite theatrical directions: scenically, he rejected traditional drawing-room realism by stripping the play almost bare: a free-standing platform stood in the middle of the stage space like an island in an endless sea as the action of the play progressed, the actors not in the present scene sat like spectral presences around the platform watching the performance, waiting for the cue to participate, complicitous in Nora’s actions and fate. ![]() ![]() ![]() It was as though a giant theatrical handduster had swept away all the must and mold that had encrusted most contemporary productions of the great modern master. In 1991, Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre of Sweden, brought to the Brooklyn Academy of Music a version of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, directed by Ingmar Bergman that was revelatory. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |