✭✭✩✩✩

by Henrik Ibsen, directed by Leah Cherniak

Soulpepper Theatre Company/Theatre Columbus,

Young Centre, Toronto

April 21, 2007

Soulpepper’s production of John Gabriel Borkman (1896) proves that Canadians are just as adept as Americans in devising loony ideas for staging Ibsen.  Director Leah Cherniak’s concept does not set out deliberately to mock the play as did Mabou Mines’s DollHouse earlier this year, but it does make an already obscure play alternately tedious and unintentionally comic.

In this fascinating late masterpiece, twin sisters Gunhild (Nancy Palk) and Ella (Martha Ross) vie for control both of Gunhild’s husband, John Gabriel Borkman, and her son Erhart (both played by Michael Simpson).  Cherniak symbolizes the themes of manipulation and self-preservation by having the three actors carry about unattractive one- to three-foot-long dolls representing the various characters they play.  This diminishes the action literally and metaphorically.  First, forcing the actors constantly to hold and manipulate dolls curtails all gestural language and confines the performers to acting with voice and face alone.  Thankfully, I sat in the front row.  Who knows if any of this can be seen at the back?  Second, Cherniak’s concept frequently makes the great play look like an inexpertly staged kiddie show with the psychological battle for Erhart portrayed as a clownish tug-of-war over a doll.  It’s relief when in times of emotion the actors put down the idiotic dolls and speak directly to each other as we wish they had all along.                          

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-04-09.

Photo: Nancy Palk and Michael Simpson. ©Cylla von Tiedemann..