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by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Duncan Macmillan, directed by Chris Abraham

Crow’s Theatre, Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto

September 11-October 17, 2024

Mrs. Helseth: “It’s the dead that cling to us”

Henrik Ibsen’s two best-known plays, A Doll’s House (1879) and Hedda Gabler (1891), strangely enough, are not the two that Ibsen scholar’s consider his greatest plays. That honour goes to The Wild Duck (1884) and Rosmersholm (1886). It is good, therefore, that Chris Abraham, who brought such vitality to Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya in 2022, has chosen to bring his keen insight to the lesser known of these, namely Rosmersholm. As far as I am aware, Rosmersholm last saw a professional production in Ontario in 2006 when it was staged by the Shaw Festival. Chris Abraham, using a fresh new adaptation by Duncan Macmillan, author of Lungs (2011) and People, Places and Things (2015), seems even more topical and even more powerful than it did in 2006.

This is how I summarized the plot of the play in 2006 : “Rosmersholm is one of Ibsen’s most enigmatic works. It is part of a series of plays following An Enemy of the People (1882) in which Ibsen turned from writing overtly political drama engaged with the here and now to the fully symbolic drama of his later years. The play begins as a political play. A small town in western Norway has become bitterly divided into camps of liberals and conservatives. The recent rise of liberal ideas has sparked a backlash led by archconservatives like the school headmaster Kroll. He comes to enlist the aid of John Rosmer, a former clergyman, to his side. Rosmer, however, under the influence of Rebecca West, a woman who nursed Rosmer’s ailing wife until the wife’s suicide, has not only renounced conservatism and embraced liberalism but now seeks a means beyond both to ‘emancipate’ mankind.

“Unfortunately, the virulent political climate of the town means that all private behaviour has become politicized. Rosmer, scion of the greatest family of the town, can no longer remain aloof even if he wanted to. The fact that he lives in the same house with his late wife’s caregiver can now easily be used as fodder against the liberal cause. But when Rosmer asks Rebecca to marry him, she refuses. The dark secret that motivates that decision overwhelms both Rosmer and Rebecca and points to an abyss in the human soul that completely obliterates the importance of political quarrels. The play’s sudden shift to love tragedy forces the audience to rethink the action. By the play’s ending we know what has happened but precisely why remains an unsettling mystery”.

Macmillan has left the action in the period and location as Ibsen indicates. He has, however, altered various elements of the plot. In Ibsen, the community has already elected a new, left-leaning government that Governor Kroll opposes. In Macmillan’s adaptation, the election of a new government is happening the day after Kroll’s first visit to see Rosmer. This gives more urgency to Kroll’s wish to have Rosmer in his camp and gives Kroll more motivation for trying to expose Rosmer’s and Rebecca’s secrets when Rosmer declares himself against Kroll.

As for the politics in the play, Kroll’s conservatives are not as extremist as present-day conservatives are. Women do not yet have rights that can be taken away. Instead, Kroll merely wants to preserve things as they are. He is a force against change or progress. Rosmer, however, is more extreme in liberalism that are present-day liberals. He is seeking radical change that includes the economic equality of all people. While we are inclined to take Rosmer’s side, Macmillan adjusts Ibsen’s play to ironize Rosmer’s views. Macmillan adds three servants to the cast, beyond Ibsen’s housekeeper Mrs. Helseth, who are present when Rosmer makes one of his speeches about the equality of all mankind. Macmillan has Rosmer hand out flowers as gifts from vases the servants have brought in and tells them to take whatever they want from the house.

This scene, of course, makes Rosmer look foolish. Rosmer is still master of the house and is still telling the servants what to do. And there is no suggestion that he plans to cease employing them. Making the main character of a tragedy look foolish may not be the best strategy, but it does underline the fact that Rosmer’s conversion to radicalism by Rebecca is new and that Rosmer has not yet thought through the ideas he has adopted from Rebecca.

In terms of symbolism, Macmillan eliminates the white shawl that Rebecca is supposed to be working on throughout the play. Rebecca’s crocheting of this shroudlike object links her to the weaving Fates of both Greek and Norse myth. Everyone, including Rebecca, agrees that her entry into Rosmersholm has been fateful. Why not, then, emphasize this as Ibsen does? Macmillan does not entirely eliminate the supernatural, since he keeps Ibsen’s symbolic white horses who represent a premonition of death.

Macmillan has also changed the ending. In Ibsen the play ends with Rosmer’s housekeeper Mrs. Helseth looking out a window and describing what she sees. Macmillan omits this speech and ends with the conversation between Rosmer and Rebecca. This makes for a much stronger conclusion than in Ibsen, who was interested in contrasting Mrs. Helseth’s limited world view with the indescribable events she witnesses. Unfortunately, Macmillan has also changed key aspects of the final conversation between Rosmer and Rebecca leaving their motives less understandable than they are in other adaptations.

The cast is universally strong with one key exception. That exception, strangely enough, is Jonathon Young as Rosmer. I’ve enjoyed Young’s performances over the years, but here he seemed to be the only performer who was not fully inside his role. All the others were so deeply engaged that a person could imagine what they were thinking even when they were silent and already have an inkling of what they would say next. Young’s intensity, however, seemed to diminish between speeches. There is no doubt that it is very difficult to play an essentially weak character like Rosmer and still hold our sympathy. Yet, others have met the challenge, as did Patrick Galligan at the Shaw in 2006, and Young did finally seem to sink into the role by Act 4.

In contrast, Virgilia Griffith is a vital Rebecca West. Griffith gives us a portrait of a woman who has liberated herself from the constraints of her time as to what is and is not proper for a woman to do or say. Griffith shows the exhilaration Rebecca feels at being able to speak out against Kroll without asking Rosmer’s permission. At the same time, Griffith lets us know that there are depths to Rebecca that are still unknown to Rosmer and, hence, to us. When Rebecca finally comes to admit her secret, we, like Rosmer, are so taken with this keenly intelligent woman that we don’t want to believe it is true.

Rosmer and Rebecca’s great opponent is Governor Kroll. Here Ben Carlson gives a masterful performance as someone who first argues on the basis of principles but is unscrupulous enough to threaten publishing scandalous details about Rosmer and Rebecca to get what he wants. Carlson ably delineates the desperation behind Kroll’s descent from attempted friendship with Rosmer to digging up dirt about Rebecca’s past.

In smaller roles, Diego Matamoros has a fine turn as Ulrik Brendel, Rosmer’s mentor, who may once have been sure of himself but now has only his rhetoric to cover up his doubts and drunkenness. Matamoros is wonderful at playing a man who asks a series of favours insisting all the while that he is not a beggar. As Rosmer’s housekeeper Mrs. Helseth, Kate Hennig provides a steadying influence in a house whose inhabitants begin to question everything about themselves. Mrs. Helseth’s support of the old ways also includes the old supernatural beliefs, and Hennig puts these forward with such conviction as Helseth that we’re not inclined to deride her ideas. Beau Dixon makes a strong impression in his single scene as Peter Mortensgaard, the editor of a liberal-oriented newspaper. Dixon shows that the left is no less hypocritical than the right. Mortensgaard seeks Rosmer’s support for the liberal cause but rejects Rosmer when Rosmer won’t proclaim himself a Christian.

Abraham has decided to stage the action in the round. Joshua Quinlan’s atmospheric set reflects all the comments about the Rosmer family as the upholders of tradition for over two hundred years by covering all four walls of the auditorium with portraits of Rosmer’s ancestors. We feel as do Rosmer and Rebecca, that all these generations of Rosmers are looking down and judging the actions of the current Rosmer who, lacking children, may be the end of their line. The set plus Kimberly Purtell and Imogen Wilson’s muted lighting reinforce the idea of Rosmersholm as a cold mausoleum of dead ideas that Rosmer and Rebecca struggle to escape.

One peculiarity of the set is that Quinlan has the most important entrance to the set where a number of important scenes take place, including the final one, in the northeastern corner of the stage. Crow’s is aware of this and has priced the seats with a good view of the northeastern corner higher than those without. I sat in a seat in the second tier of prices and found I missed little except for a key stage effect that made those gasp who were in the highest priced seats.

Fortunately, while it would have been exciting to see this effect, sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne skillfully translates into sound a frighteningly clear, step-by-step narrative of the awful events that are occurring outside the doors. I don’t recall sound design in play ever fulfilling so well so important a function.

Chris Abraham beautifully manages the segue in the action from its focus on politics and earthly concerns to morals and spiritual concerns. He makes clearer than I’ve ever seen before how Rosmer and Rebecca are first caught in a web of earthly pettiness only to escape and find themselves in a stronger web of ethical contradictions. It is this movement in the play out of the everyday into the eternal that makes it so different from Ibsen’s previous prose plays. This is a gripping, insightful production of a great play that no theatre-lover should miss.

Christopher Hoile

Photo: Jonathon Young as John Rosmer and Virgilia Griffith as Rebecca West; Virgilia Griffith as Rebecca West and Kate Hennig as Mrs. Helseth; Jonathon Young as John Rosmer and Ben Carlson as Governor Kroll; Virgilia Griffith as Rebecca West and Jonathon Young as John Rosmer. © 2024 Dahlia Katz.

For tickets visit: www.crowstheatre.com.