For in London, you may see obscure plays in West End basements
Not sure if that was among all that life could afford for Dr J, what with the licensed theatres and so on.
Anyway, at the weekend went to the Jermyn Street Theatre (I think 'luxury studio theatre' is pushing it a bit, rly) to see Ibsen's* 'St John's Night', its first UK production.
It's a very early one of his, and the first set in contemporary Norway. It's possibly a rather slight piece, perhaps influenced by A Midsummer Night's Dream with its two pairs of confused lovers eventually sorted out through supernatural intervention, but it was an well-done production and we enjoyed it.
However, it was very badly received on its first production in Bergen in 1853 and Ibsen omitted it from his collected works. (It's in a lighter and more comedic vein than he usually deploys, even if there is that leitmotif of secrets of the past coming to light and transforming the situation in the present.)
I do wonder whether presenting the romantic Nordic nationalist Julian Poulsen as rather a wally in a play written for a pioneering Norwegian-language theatre went down about as well as putting on a play featuring a plonker of a Celtic Revivalist at the Abbey Theatre c. 1910.
Or maybe it was the blend of the fantastic and the realistic (documents relating to legal shenanigans surfacing due to magic-flower-transformed-to-key).
*Mad fangirl of Henrik as I am, I didn't manage to catch 'Emperor and Galilean' when it was on in London last year - it's even longer than 'Peer Gynt', consisting of 2 parts of 5 acts - and I don't think I have that many regrets about this culchah fail.
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