AN IBSEN ANTIQUE AT THE AURORA THEATRE
        Trying to Translate 19th-century Norway to modern-day America  
                                              By Carol Benet
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area theater
                                                                 Weeks starting April 19, 2010
                                                                 Vol. 12, No. 94

           BERKELEY---The intimate Aurora Theatre next to the Berkeley Rep is brave for staging Ibsen’s “John Gabriel Borkman,” an antique of a play boasting an uneven cast.  
            The 19th century Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s works are never easy to produce.  They are often long and strange to a 21st century audience in their mixture of fantasy and reality.  Although he has been called the father of the modern theater and even though his themes are timeless, his plays do not always translate to modern times like ours.
            Yes, we never forget Nora and her slamming the door on her husband and going out to forge her own life in "A Doll’s House."  And his exposés of corrupt builders, hypocrites and inherited familial weaknesses place him right in the period of Naturalism along with Emile Zola.
            But his "Peer Gynt" is on another track when Ibsen expressed a more fantastical side with a many faceted and ebullient character wandering the earth and experiencing everything.  It is the ending that to us seems corny. 
            And so with "John Gabriel Borkman’s" ending  -- it is almost embarrassing to the modern audience.  It is a play about a man who was once a respected banker but then mishandled his clients’ funds and caused many bankruptcies.  We see him and his wife, her sister, a good friend and his son and mistress years after his release from jail.  The infamy that follows Borkman and his wife has poisoned their lives.
            David Eldridge wrote a new script based on the original (1896), shortening it and lopping off characters.  Barbara Oliver, director of this play and one of the founders of the Aurora, did a fine job of producing such an antique, except for casting some of the principals.  The male cast members were excellent, but the females were not up to the same level.
            In the title role, James Carpenter, one of the most talented actors in the Bay Area, gave a convincing role of the shamed and at time crazed Borkman.  Mrs. Borkman (Karen Grassle) and her sister (Karen Lewis) at times seem almost amateurish in their presentations.  The son Erhart is strong and so is the friend (Jack Powell).  The mistress of Erhart is overacted by a femme fatale (Pamela Gaye Walker) adding to the awkwardness of the play.
            But in fairness to all, it is the weirdness of the ending when they go out into the forest with the snow falling (John Iacovelli’s fine set), where the play nears the otherworldliness of "Peer Gynt,"  becoming almost risible. 
            This Ibsen play was revived by the Donmar Warehouse in London, where it was quite a success. The idea of a corrupt banker is indeed a timely subject, but it is the end where it shows its age. 
            "Borkman" plays through May 9 at the Aurora Theatre, Berkeley.  For info: (510) 843-4822 or go online.
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       © Carol Benet 2010
        Carol Benet is a regular theater reviewer for artssf.com.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly)focus on theater, dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into recordings by local artists, and a few departures into books (by authors of the region)as well.
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