When We Dead Awaken - Coronet

[Jan]

A chance next year to see this quite rarely performed late (and so quite odd) Ibsen play. A co-production with the Norwegian Ibsen Company. A follow-up to their very good joint production of Lady From The Sea a couple of years ago.

www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/when-we-dead-awaken/

[NeilVHughes]

Thanks for the heads up, enjoyed Lady From The Sea and will definitely book to se this.

[londonpostie]

Thank you. Also worth checking out what else is coming - includes a Beckett:

www.thecoronettheatre.com/whats-on/

[NeilVHughes]

Excellent go see Pt2 has been rescheduled.

Pt1 was the most incomprehensible nights theatre I have ever attended, the audience sat on the stage and the 3 actors were in the auditorium.

Complete lack of narrative a man in the mud with a few tins reflecting on Pim. A mesmerising immersion in language without a narrative form only a chaotic collection of words with the a minimal hook as Pym floats enigmatically in the sea of syntax.

Bought the book, 40/50 word sentences, no punctuation and every time you read it your focus moved and any meaning is transposed, not sure if complete gobbledegook or genius and Beckett was just taking the p**s.

Despite this a play that resonated with me, had it booked before lockdown 1 and so pleased it is being resurrected,

[bordeaux]

When we Dead Awaken was the in the first season of plays in the Jonathan Kent/Ian McDiarmid era at the Almeida in 1990, was it? Starring Claire Bloom. I think it was the first thing Kent had directed and when in later years he was asked what his advice to someone starting their directing career was, he would say 'Don't start with When We Dead Awaken'.

[Jan]

Dec 24, 2021 11:40:46 GMT bordeaux said:

When we Dead Awaken was the in the first season of plays in the Jonathan Kent/Ian McDiarmid era at the Almeida in 1990, was it? Starring Claire Bloom. I think it was the first thing Kent had directed and when in later years he was asked what his advice to someone starting their directing career was, he would say 'Don't start with When We Dead Awaken'.

Yes I saw that production (1990). There was a later one (2011) with Michael Pennington at the Print Room, but it is infrequently produced.

[ruperto]

Not sure if anyone else caught the first preview of When We Dead Awaken tonight.

TBH, this didn’t really do it for me - it’s quite an arid little piece that in this production is mostly performed in Norwegian with English subtitles - but it does have intriguing echoes of The Master Builder (probably my favourite Ibsen play), and is clearly one for Ibsen completists.

The website says the running time is 75 minutes, but tonight it was all done in 65 minutes or so (it started at about 7.35pm or perhaps just before, and finished at 8.40pm on the dot).

There were a couple of issues with the staging tonight that will hopefully be rectified. During two key scenes, because of where they were standing, one or more characters blocked the English subtitles for those sitting in some of the front central seats, which is where I was. The woman sitting next to me was very cross about it and went off to buttonhole a member of staff, and I suspect it could have affected others too, so hopefully that will be addressed. Also, there were a few typos in the English subtitles - again, hopefully these will be picked up…

It was great to be back at the Coronet Theatre, which was looking particularly lovely tonight…

[bgarde]

I had a £10 ticket back row H and was still very pleased with my view. I very much enjoyed it. Probably the only weaker points for me were when they veered into English. Glad to have seen it.

The Coronet is indeed a lovely venue, and the bar alone is a knockout!

[joem]

I have always had a soft spot for Ibsen's final play, even though it feels like the work of a playwright who was in a hurry to finish due to his failing health. It is way shorter than the average Ibsen and its sparsity gives it a modern feel even if the language is recognisably Ibsen, with the heightened tone which permeates his last plays.

This production is interesting although it has a few niggles which being it down a notch or two. The staging is quite impressive, with the impression of mountain scenery and the water-filled brook in the middle of the stage - mind the moss if you are in the front row, you might sweep it aside with coat etc. Whilst it is very interesting to hear most of the work in the original language (Danish with Norwegian influences), the sub-titles screened on the curtain at the back of the stage are regularly blocked by the actors. They might have thought of putting them higher up on the stage?

The acting is good, most of the cast being from the Norwegian Ibsen Company, they obviously know their Ibsen. I did wonder whether some of the intimate moments were being performed at too great a distance - the Coronet does have a pretty wide stage - but the pitch and timing was excellent. I think Ulfheim (James Browne), the hunter, can afford to have a cruder look but the interplay between Rubek (Oystein Roger), the ageing sculptor and surrogate for the playwright, his younger wife Maia (Andrea Braein Hovig) and his old flame and model Irene (Ragnhild Margrethe Gudbrandsen) was very good.

Spoiler alert. Not sure about the final scene being narrated. Ok an avalanche on stage isn't the easiest but, like anything, can be done/suggested.

A very autobiographical play but also a play of ideas. How much, and how many, is it acceptable to sacrifice for art? Unusually for late Ibsen redemption not in the love of an older man for a younger woman, who awakens old yearnings and aspirations, but by understanding that what was lost might be recovered rather than reinvented.

Love this theatre and think it's going in the right direction in finding a workable niche in such a difficult and competitive market.

[pledge]

Assumed I'd seen this play before, long ago - but in the event it didn't ring any bells. Frankly, I found it a tad underwhelming - mostly because it's so compressed (seems like there's at least 40 mins missing?) - but also because the characters seem to do little but make grand Pronouncements at each other about Art and Life. In a play that's largely about a man effectively turning a living woman into lifeless marble it's ironic that all of the characters seem pretty much carved in marble. It's so heavy on symbolism (even for Ibsen - Mountains, Bears, Life etc, and yes, an Avalanche) that if I hadn't known I'd have guessed it as Strindberg. I never became truly involved with any of the characters, who seemed pretty one note, nor with their dilemnas. Maybe it's better thought of as a kind of string quartet, with four solitary voices circling around and sometimes across one another? I'll certainly read it now, but I can't help wondering if a more conventional/complete production might better vivify the text? Perfectly good acting, though to my mind nothing special, and I was baffled by the decision to alternate between the original and English - given that I still needed the surtitles to understand the English passages. Glad I went, but a curiosity rather than a satisfying dramatic experience.

[Jan]

Dec 24, 2021 11:40:46 GMT bordeaux said:

When we Dead Awaken was the in the first season of plays in the Jonathan Kent/Ian McDiarmid era at the Almeida in 1990, was it? Starring Claire Bloom. I think it was the first thing Kent had directed and when in later years he was asked what his advice to someone starting their directing career was, he would say 'Don't start with When We Dead Awaken'.

Didn't stop him directing Emperor and Galilean at NT though, he's a sucker for punishment, what a long night that was. 

[zak]

A symbolist play in all its glory and all its faults, the play of a mature man trying to make sense of life and its pathways and dead ends. There is a strongly compelling Norwegian character in the somewhat static presentation of the characters plight. They look as if those oddly vampiric people in Munch's paintings had been given voice, and the set designer at the Coronet theatre production has just got it right: three characters standing by a stream against a mountain of rubble and debris, such as all our lives are. All mountains are such piles of sediments, telling a story of turmoil and things that quietly passed and were buried underneath, giving them shape. An old sculptor whose best days are behind him gets back to his home town in Norway together with his much younger wife, whom he married after leaving Irene, his old muse, a woman he used to create his masterpiece and then abandoned searching for a fresh inspiration that never came. He is now, like his art, a museum piece, a has been. The return to Norway after travelling the world is both a defeat and a second chance. There he meets Irene again, the three of them - artist, wife and old muse- delivering their lines in the Norwegian summer twilight, undecided about what to do, whether to go on a fiord cruise or climb to the mountain above, an obvious symbolic choice between to keep coasting along or to go on exploring. In the event, they go for the climb, but in separate ways. Maia, the wife, still feeling in her the sap of life, goes with young Ulffheim, a bear hunter and a creature of the wild, nature in its cruel no nonsense primordial state, while Arnold and Irene do it on their own and at their own quiet pace, reminiscing and analysing past mistakes. At the top of the mountain they are caught by fog. Maia and Ulffheim descend to life, while the older lovers are left behind, happily lost in the mists of time, two ghosts awoken, haunting the earth forever. The symbolism used comes across perhaps as a bit crude to us modern audiences who "know", for we think we have learned so much along the path of history since Ibsen's times. But, have we, or are we still going round the same old terrain? That is the play's point. It is a bit too wordy and lacking in action, but it comes beautifully in the original Norwegian with surtitles, as an extended poem recited by the actors in the midst of that desolate stage, like characters in a Beckett play. As my friend said, there is no such thing as a bad Ibsen play.

[Jan]

I agree with most of the comments above on the play itself but I'd seen it twice before so it was not a surprise. Apparently James Joyce said this was Ibsen's best play but in reality it is barely in the top ten for a modern audience and so is of most interest to Ibsen enthusiasts.

The blocking is still bad with the surtitles invisible to the central stalls for significant periods including, somewhat crucially, the last scene. The switch into English was not as well integrated as in Lady From The Sea but used to indicate the "otherness" of the bear hunter it was OK.

Most interesting for me was this Norwegian production was in general no different at all to English productions of the play, no new insights or perspectives which surprised me for one of his symbolist plays. Maybe we'd need to see Peer Gynt to notice any difference. I always think if we saw Chekhov done by a Russian company it would be quite different.

Commendable of the Coronet to have staged this, I hope the company returns next year.

[theoracle]

This was a strange way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon but I felt moved by the performances and I think having a majority of the dialogue spoken in Norwegian added to the texture of this piece. The themes of decay and regret are explored very deeply and suited the Coronet Theatre very poignantly. I didn't find it particularly riveting but there is an intensity here which kept the audience gripped. This was my first time at the Coronet and I was slightly disheartened by the lack of a more diverse audience in Notting Hill, but the auditorium is absolutely gorgeous and I hope to return soon.

[joem]

A point on Ibsen's Norwegian. As I understand it, and I stand to be corrected, Ibsen spoke, was educated in and wrote in Danish with some Norwegian idioms ie Norwegian only developed as a separate language in line with its political progression from union with Denmark to union with Sweden to independence.

I don't think this makes any difference to anything, unless perhaps if you understand one of the languages in question, but merely make the point that Ibsen was, understandably, adopted as a Norwegian icon and cultural giant even though he himself spent only a very short time towards the end of his life in independent Norway, having spent much of his adult life away anyway.

Very pleased at the positive comments on this production by the way. Well done Coronet and more Ibsen please!