Virgilia Griffith, as Rebecca West, and Ben Carlson, as Governor Andreas Krol, in Rosmersholm.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
- Title: Rosmersholm
- Written by: Henrik Ibsen
- In a new adaptation by: Duncan MacMillan
- Director: Chris Abraham
- Actors: Virgilia Griffith and Jonathon Young
- Company: Crow’s Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to Oct. 6, 2024
Watching Rosmersholm at Crow’s Theatre is like being sucked into a chiaroscuro oil painting for two hours.
Director Chris Abraham’s sumptuous in-the-round period production of this infrequently produced 1886 Henrik Ibsen play is full of breathtaking contrasts between light and dark in its design.
Joshua Quinlan’s immersive set invites the audience right into a dusty, grief-filled drawing room at Rosmersholm, the 19th-century Norwegian manor of the Rosmer clan.
A pair of French doors in the corner offer the sole outlet to the outside world, which, glimpsed through the windows, only seems even more moody thanks to Kimberly Purtell’s dramatic lighting and some special effects I won’t spoil here.
Virgilia Griffith, Jonathon Young, and Diego Matamoros in Rosmerholm.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Rosmersholm, produced at Crow’s in a recent adaptation by the British playwright Duncan MacMillan, is a dramatization of how hard it is to be a complex, shaded human being at a time when politics are starkly divided and morality is black and white.
A year after his wife Beata’s suicide, John Rosmer (Jonathon Young), a former pastor and last of a long aristocratic line, is being courted by both sides on the eve of a too-close-to-call provincial election.
Kroll (Ben Carlson), brother of John’s late wife, wants him to speak up for traditional values and virtues as represented by his ancestors depicted in portraits on the manor’s walls.
John, however, has in fact recently come around to a more liberated mode of thought alongside Rebecca West (Virgilia Griffith), a friend of his late wife who resides in the manor with him.
Jonathon Young as Pastor John Rosmer, alongside Virgilia Griffith's Rebecca West in Rosmersholm.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Though he has yet to come out about his new politics and points of view, Rebecca forces the issue by sending word to the editor of a reformist newspaper named Mortensgaard (Beau Dixon) that he is ready to speak out in favour of equality.
The initial interest in having the great John Rosmer as a political ally, however, starts to curdle as questions of character intrude and the hidden secrets of Rosmersholm start to rise to the surface.
John and Rebecca are politically on the same page, but are there romantic feelings between them too – and, if so, when did those begin? And what exactly made Beata jump off the footbridge visible outside the windows at Rosmersholm? Who is Rebecca, really?
The impending election that locals worry will turn into a “bloodbath” is, in fact, a stakes-raising addition to Ibsen’s original play by MacMillan (Every Brilliant Thing, Lungs); his adaptation takes every opportunity to highlight how the play might be relevant to today’s world as when Kroll says: “Elections used to be won by those who spoke with the most sense, not the most volume.”
Abraham’s production leans into the political extremes of the play, too: Carlson carves out his traditionalist character as if out of stone, while Dixon’s reformer seems barely any more movably human. Ulrik Brendal (Diego Matamoros), Rosmer’s childhood tutor and the other radical in the play, appears to be a grifter going mad.
Ben Carlson and Jonathon Young in Rosmersholm, playing at the Crow Theatre until Oct. 6.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
While this is all very compelling, the psychological dynamics of Ibsen’s play – proto-psychological, really – are not as clearly outlined for the audience.
Griffiths gives a wonderfully layered performance as the forceful Rebecca West, whose complexity makes Hedda Gabler seem like an easy character to figure out. But the relationship between her and Young’s weak John only becomes more perplexing as the play goes along.
Something isn’t quite pulled off in the writing or the production in making the questions surrounding Beata’s suicide resonate.
The final scenes in which the election almost entirely fades out of importance, meanwhile, are full of convoluted exposition about who felt what when and what their intention might have been at the time and in which even Rebecca talks about herself as a puzzle to be figured out piece by piece. It feels more like actors analyzing their characters as you might in rehearsal than performing them.
The play’s stunning climax, however, is pulled off perfectly by the production team – as symbolism takes over from realism in this story about the haunted house that is Rosmersholm. I wondered if maybe the whole thing might have worked better if realism had been ditched earlier.
Another aspect of the Crow’s production design that stands out are the portraits of the dead patriarchs of the Rosmer family hanging directly above the heads of spectators. It is as if past and the future are both watching the drama that is unfolding, as if this old Ibsen play might hold the key to understanding where we’ve been and where we are headed.
It’s no surprise that it can’t quite live up to such high expectations.