12 March 2006

My Master Builder!

I saw Ibsen's The Master Builder on March 1, at the Aurora Theater in Berkeley. This was only the second time I'd been there; I was there last year for an excellent production of Aeschylus's The Persians, a play that unfortunately is newly relevant (arrogant empire comes to sorrow in the middle east. . . .). It's a small theater, with an open stage in the middle surrounded by four rows of seats. So your view is sometimes blocked by the actors, but to make up for it you can see everything close up. It sounds dismissive to say this was a really solid production, but I mean that as high praise. It was one of the most consistently cast and performed works I've seen recently. James Carpenter as the Master Builder was the right combination of attractive and reptilian; Lauren Grace as the odd, troll-like young woman who enters his life was strange enough to be unsettling but not so strange as to be off-putting. So much was conveyed with glances, suppressed smiles, little movements. . . .
It was actually pretty amazing. I think Ibsen, much as I love him, is very difficult to stage these days. His symbolism can seem too obvious. And the social issues that once got him banned are too close to us to be merely historical but different enough so that he's not really talking about the same thing -- this is particularly true of the "women's issues." Despite the oppression fantasies of most of the Bay Area population, the life of a middle-class woman in the Bay Area is a very, very different thing from that of a comparable woman in 19th century Norway.

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