Word: awakening
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Elegant. Hauntingly beautiful. The sets for Henrik Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken, based on an original English translation by American Repertory Theatre Artistic Director Robert Brustein, confirm post-modern director Robert Wilson as a visual artist of the first order. The scenery, designed by Wilson and John Conklin, is minimalist yet loses nothing in sumptuousness or effect...
...Wilson were only half as successful in his deconstruction of the play's linguistic dialogue, When We Dead Awaken would be a resounding achievement. Unfortunately, the staging fails utterly in this regard. The dialogue and storyline are so disjoined from actual human experience as to be pushed hopelessly out of the viewer's reach...
Written in 1899, When We Dead Awaken was Ibsen's last play. In contrast to those earlier plays which were concerned mainly with society and social convention, When We Dead Awaken is the last of a series of four plays which drew heavily on individual and autobiographical themes...
When We Dead Awaken suffers from none of the faults that typify a failed production. The actors are not incompetent, the substance of the play, at least as it left Ibsen's hands, is more than satisfactory, and the scenery borders on the faultless...
...problem rests squarely with Wilson's staging of the play. Of all of Ibsen's plays, the last four, and particularily When We Dead Awaken, are largely symbolic in nature. When We Dead Awaken, so highly autobiographical, lends itself to introspective interior monologues. Yet as modern drama it is not unconcerned with realism. Wilson's adaptation and direction, in their effect at least, are. The tremendous liberties taken with the play's staging reflect this difference poignantly...