Canadian Stage opened a production of Amy Herzog’s adaptation of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the Bluma Appel Theatre on Wednesday evening. It’s directed by Brendan Healey and stars Hailey Gillis and Gray Powell as Nora and Thorvald. It runs two hours without a break and it’s mesmerizing from start to finish. Direction, acting and designs are all of the highest quality and Gillis gives one of the best performances I have ever experienced.
Crow’s Theatre opened the season last night with a production of Ibsen’s Romersholm in an adaptation by Duncan Macmillan directed by Chris Abraham. It’s not perhaps Ibsen’s best known play but it’s powerful and somewhat topically relevant and the production at Crow’s is excellent in every way.
What does Hedda seek? I think that’s the question at the heart of Liisa Ripo-Martelli’s adaptation of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday evening. It’s not heavily adapted. It’s still Kristiania in the late 19th century and the environment is as dull, provincial, stuffy and “respectable” as can be. The language is a little more direct than Ibsen especially in the way men speak to women but still more is left unsaid than not. Presented with the audience on three sides of the tiny Coal Mine space it’s intimate to the point of, entirely appropriate, claustrophobia.
operaramblings 