John Gabriel Borkman at BAM - A Review
Another day, another performance of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman. Ah, Ibsen. I’ve said before I’m not a Shakespeare scholar, and I’m certainly not an Ibsen scholar. I’m more of a William Howard Taft scholar. I’ve now seen John Gabriel Borkman thirteen times - nine times in Dublin, and four times in Brooklyn. I think it should be fairly obvious that if this wasn’t a interesting play, I’d not have actually seen it all those times - I would have purchased a cheap ticket and sat in the bar the way I did for Creditors, which bored me after 3 performances. I saw Creditors four times in London, and after I’d seen it once at BAM, the very thought of sitting through it again made me want to retch. And it was more fun hanging out in the BAM Bar anyway.
But back to John Gabriel Borkman. I totally get the draw of the play and why it would captivate actors like Rickman, Shaw, and Duncan. It’s hard, and deep and complicated. While the performances got continually better every time in Dublin, I felt like the actors never really became one with their characters - that they were still struggling with their motivations and the connections with each other.
Arriving in Brooklyn on the front edge of an arctic front, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I knew there was a new director and the set had changed. At first glance, I hated the new set. There were no walls; to me it felt very… I don’t know, I felt lost in space. This truly may be because I was sitting on the front row and the perspective is always a bit skewed from there. But the characters were so much richer, more developed. Even the character of Frida Foldal, a small part with only one scene, was deeper. Amy Molloy was able to better capture her frustration about not being able “to join in.” I spoke to John Kavanaugh the first night I was there (in relentless snow) and he explained how the set had greatly helped them with their process. The walls had made them feel closed in, he said. By the second performance I no longer noticed the lack of walls and was held enthrall by the changes in the characters themselves and the interactions between them.
This play was always good. Even on nights in Dublin when somebody tanked their lines, it was still good. But at BAM, it’s finally coming into the true brilliance I always felt was lurking under the surface in Dublin.