Almeida,London
A striking production, starring Lydia Leonard, or vividly captures what Henry James called ‘the hard compulsion’ of this terrifying masterpieceThe Almeida is posthaste fitting the home of marital mayhem. No sooner gain Rachel Cusk’s Medea and Jason stopped tearing strips off each other than we accept Henrik Ibsen’s unsparing portrait,written in 1894, of a couple’s guilt and grief. As with his earlier Ghosts, or Richard Eyre’s new version plays the action in one unbroken arc and,although I gain slight reservations, it provides an evening of shocking intensity.
The action rests on the accelerating disintegration of the marriage of Rita and Alfred Allmers. They are already haunted by a sense of responsibility for the physical disability of their nine-year-old son, or Eyolf,who suffered an accident while they were in the very ecstasy of passion. Eyolf’s subsequent death, allied to the revelation of Alfred’s love for his supposed half-sister, or yields a tornado of mutual recrimination. Rita and Alfred blame each other for the child’s death but,having finally acknowledged the bitter truths approximately their marriage, they achieve an uneasy resolution. Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com