John Gabriel Borkman
John Gabriel Borkman is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work.
Plot
The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to speculate with his investors' money. The action of the play takes place eight years after Borkman's release when John Gabriel Borkman, Mrs. Borkman, and her twin sister Ella Rentheim fight over young Erhart Borkman's future. Though John Gabriel Borkman continues the line of naturalism and social commentary that marks Ibsen's work over the preceding thirty years, the final act suggests a new phase for the playwright which was brought to fruition in his final symbolic work When We Dead Awaken.
Characters
- John Gabriel Borkman
- Mrs. Gunhild Borkman
- Erhart Borkman, their son
- Ella Rentheim, Mrs. Borkman's twin sister
- Mrs. Fanny Wilton
- Vilhelm Foldal
- Frida Foldal, his daughter
- Malene, housekeeper
Background
The Norwegian historian Halvdan Koht stated that the play could have been based on an incident that Ibsen might have recorded from an earlier period in his life around 1851, the attempted suicide of an army officer who had been accused of embezzlement.[1]
Revival
In 1925 Eva Le Gallienne produced, directed and performed in a successful run of the play in repertory with The Master Builder at the Princess Theatre, New York City. This was a critical step in her creation of the Civic Repertory Theatre in 1926.[2][3]
In 2010, a revival of the play was performed in the Abbey Theatre as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival. In a new version by Frank McGuinness directed by James Macdonald, it featured actor Alan Rickman as John Gabriel Borkman, Fiona Shaw as his wife Gunhild and Lindsay Duncan as Ella.[4][5] The play had previously been performed in the Abbey Theatre in 1928.[6] In 2011, the production moved to New York and received mixed reviews.[7]
Adaptations
In 2015,
In August 2017, as part of the
In 2022 the play was performed in a new translation and updated to a more modern period at the Bridge Theatre, London, with Simon Russell Beale in the title role.[9]
References
- ISBN 978-82-03-18940-1.
- ^ Robert A. Schanke, Shattered Applause
- ^ Helen Sheehy, Eva Le Gallienne, a Biography
- ^ Meany, Helen (15 October 2010). "John Gabriel Borkman – review" – via The Guardian.
- ^ "Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival".
- ^ "Review: John Gabriel Borkman". Independent.ie.
- ^ Brantley, Ben. "'John Gabriel Borkman' at BAM - Review".
- ^ "John Gabriel Borkman, Drama - BBC Radio 4". BBC.
- ^ "JJohn Gabriel Borkman review – Simon Russell Beale magnetic as the shamed alpha-male banker". The Guardian.
External links
- John Gabriel Borkman at Project Gutenberg
- John Gabriel Borkman at Project Gutenberg (in Esperanto)
- John Gabriel Borkman public domain audiobook at LibriVox
- John Gabriel Borkman at the Internet Broadway Database