The little white attic

Before we begin, I’m going to say that I’m talking about plays in the broad sense: not only live performances but also texts and filmed play...

I know, I wrote that the last blog post was my response once and for all to the mantra “Plays are meant to be seen, not read.” But I want to...

1/ In Rosmersholm , Ghosts , The Wild Duck , and—if I remember correctly— The Doll’s House, Ibsen seems closer to the ancient Greeks than t...

I picked up the play thinking it’s about a good man standing up for the truth—standing alone—and getting ostracised and punished for pointin...

There was a time when pretty much all I read was novels and short stories; the plays I knew were those assigned at school or university. The...

I finished Sanshiro last night. I don’t have a lot to say—in the end, the characters are still opaque, unlike those in Soseki’s Kokoro and...

From “A Woman’s Kingdom”: “…she thought, too, that it was too late to dream of happiness, that everything was over for her, and it was impos...

The translation is by Una Ellis-Fermor.  1/ At the centre of the play is the marriage between Jørgen Tesman and Hedda (née Gabler). Jørgen i...

1/ In many ways, The Wild Duck is more complex than Ghosts . Ghosts has 5 characters: Mrs Alving, her son Oswald, Manders (the sanctimoni...

So that I don’t get shouted for having lived in Norway and not knowing Ibsen, I picked up Ghosts , translated by R. Farquharson Sharp. I had...