The third Ibsen Festival, organised by the Dramatic Arts and Design Studio in collaboration with the Embassy of Norway in New Delhi, concluded with a brilliant teleplay of Ibsen’s definitive feminist play The Dolls House by Mabou Mines, the avant garde theatre group formed in New York City in 1971, which has travelled to all parts of the world and won the Obie Award for the Best Direction and Best Performance for Dollhouse. However “logistics” for a live performance for this Ibsen festival could not be worked out, hence the teleplay. The director and adapter of the play, Lee Breuer explained that Mark Povinelli, the actor who plays Torvald Helmer, Nora’s husband, was busy doing a film — a big break for the little man — which is one reason a live production was impossible.
The play is called Dollhouse for several reasons; Nora brings home as a Christmas present a doll’s house large enough for the children to play in. The furniture, crockery and bric-a-brac are just right for the children Emmy and Ivar who are about three feet tall. Torvald, Krogstad and Dr Rank are also the same size as the children. So, in fact, the director creates a miniature world for the males in which the women do not fit, unless they are also doll-like who allow the men to patronise them. Nora is called my canary, my sparrow, my skylark by her husband Torvald until he finds out that she took a loan from the bank (for his illness) by forging her father’s signatures. Krogstad of the bank is blackmailing her. Torvald is livid with her and condemns her as a criminal. He allows her stay at home, but she will have nothing to do with the children who must not be infected by her sin. A moment later when the contract is returned by the blackmailer, Torvald is all honey again saying all is well now as she has been saved.
But for Nora, it is too late. She suddenly realises she is a doll, a toy for Torvald, and was a doll for her father. The last scenes are brilliant. Torvald lies in his small bed awaiting Nora to return after taking off her party clothes. He masturbates and goes to sleep and continues to sleep while Nora speaks with him. Then there is an inversion of the Romeo-Juliet balcony scene. Nora stands in the balcony telling Torvald that she is leaving him and Torvald is struggling to climb up whining and crying for Nora to stay. From the simpering Nora with an artificially high-pitched voice to the self realised Nora, Maude Mitchell, who was awarded the Obie for the Best Performance, gives a superbly controlled performance.
The audience, comprising puppets sitting on the stage, represents society whose strings are held by the system makers and those who uphold the status quo. The male puppets behave like their human counterparts, voyeuristically taking out their opera glasses whenever there is nudity or sex play of which there is some toward the end (blanked out for Indian viewers). The same leads to female underwear floating down on the pianist’s head and to “tchtch” from the so called prudes in society. The production score is brilliantly played by Ning Yu on a piano, the lid covering a large part of the stage left down on which the actors come to disclose something of high importance. Ning Yu is an active participant in the action often entering the stage to play the toy piano. She cries and laughs with the characters.
As Nora removes her clothes, her girdle flies into the air, she throws off her wig to reveal a bald head, the women puppets gradually get up with both arms raised as they hail Nora and her decision. It is Ibsen’s victory.
DEEPAN SIVARAMAN’S PEER GYNT
Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is a complex play directed by Deepen Sivaraman in his landmark style of an interactive visually narrative like the 2010 Meta award-winning Spinal Cord. A loosely adapted Indian version, it is set in a lunatic asylum in a hospital. The hospital has a philosophy; we are mostly born in a hospital and die in one. On his deathbed Peer Gynt asks God for another chance, he is given that and he runs away with his sinful heart which had been removed by God for examination. The Devil also lays claims to Peer Gynt’s heart and soul.
Staged in a space on the stage with the audience sitting on four sides on benches, the play proceeds as arena theatre in the round. The Devil and his skeletal dog make a strong visual statement. They begin to chase Peer through his second chance. The beginning of the play holds attention. It is clear that the game is between god and the devil. The abduction of the girl Peer desires from the chapel where she is getting married is a hilarious bit of choreography. After his lust has been slaked (another brilliant design), he dumps the girl. Then he manages to escape the wrath of the mob and meet his mother who is unwell.
Peer takes her to the hospital where she dies. The death sequence is very emotional as visualised by the writer and I have been moved whenever I have seen it. One is not as emotionally involved in the death as Peer guides his mother through her illusions till he gets her to the gates of heaven and argues with St. Peter to take her in. The soundtrack is the coughing, moans and groans of the three sick men awaiting death in the same ward. Peer decides to make some money and gets businessmen together. He is looted and defeated. Next he takes on the role of a fake god man. He is successful until he makes an attempt to rape a female acolyte.
Post-intermission, the play dragged a bit. Deepan could well have edited the scene on the high seas where peer and the captain of the ship fight the waves. His wish to be emperor leads him back to the lunatic asylum where he presides over a death that leaves him in a vulnerable state. This part also requires tightening. The woman whom he raped on her wedding day is blind, crying and waiting for him. Thus is Peer Gynt redeemed. Ibsen ends the saga on a happy note. Peer Gynt is directed with imagination by Deepan Sivaraman, encompassing sound, lights and design. He has wonderful actors in Anil P. who plays the title role, Gopalan K. (who was the Meta award-winning mother) in several roles — Devil, sea captain, a nun, chimpanzee, a madhouse inmate etc, James Elia, Rajan C.R. (playing the mother) and all the others are excellent performers.
ILA ARUN’S MAREECHIKA
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In Ila Arun’s Rajasthani adaptation of Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea, the undulating sands of the desert become the sea that the lady of the house Rampyari (Ishita Arun) muses on. The production had many novel elements. The Bhopa and Bhopi traditional narrators of painted scrolls or Phads narrate the story from Ibsen Ji Ki Phad. Rampyari is married to a vaid (a doctor practicing Indian medicine) with two grown-up daughters. The young Rampyari is restless and takes several dips in the cooling waters of the bauri, a kind of stepwell. As it comes to pass, the vaid discovers her past when she was in love with a sailor. His adventures on the high seas and stories about the places he has visited charge Rampyari’s imagination and she begins to fantasise the sea and its immeasurable mysteries.
One day, the stranger with whom she had plighted her troth, and who according to news was dead, appears at the vaid’s house. He asks her to come away with him. After a few days of agonising, Rampyari decides to stay back with her good and kind husband. In the production, which was directed by Ila Arun and K.K. Raina, the opening bhopa-bhopi sequences were played well by Ila Arun and Ravi Jhankal. The establishing of Ibsen ji ki Phad with Henrik Ibsen’s portrait on the pad was a tour de theatre. The production was blessed by Manmohan Singh’s drawings and the lighting and slides projection by Salim Akhtar.
The adaptation was inventive and the music excellent, but far too loud. Much of the action became subservient to the bhopa-bhopi and the high decibel music.
The other plays at the festival included The Mountain Bird, an incomplete opera liberetto by Ibsen (1859), inaugural staging by the Norwegian Company, Grusomhetens Theatre or the theatre of cruelty as in Antonin Artaud. The music by contemporary Norwegian composer Filip Sand is folk oriented for this play that deals with a wild uncivilised being living in a remote valley, feared by the nearby village folk. She is pure, not infected by materialism or conventions. According to the director, the “hero in our performance represents a person without caste... an outcast.”
The production moved at a snail’s pace, with long gaps of nothing happening. There were processions galore, besides the wedding processions in the libretto, the company also has parades of characters in slow motion as a signature of the group. The other two plays at the Ibsen Festival were When We Dead Awaken directed by Saulius Anatnas Varnas of Lithuania and B. Jayashree’s Kannad adaptation of The Master Builder.