Customer Reviews

The Marriage of Figaro (Plays for Performance Series)

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Too operatic, I think, to be successful on the stage today, in the 'theater of realism' that Ibsen himself did so much to invent! "The Lady from the Sea" demands to be read as a 19th C melodrama, replete with stilted language and conventions of stagecraft that a youthful audience in 2009 will find embarrassing; it's uncomfortably halfway between realism and 'magic realism', that is, between a plausible psychological drama and a ghost story.

Still, there are depths in this odd play, which is not what it seems. It is definitely not a love story with a happy ending. Rather it's about the unbroachable wall between men and women in a society of strict gender roles. It's Ibsen's most radical statement of feminism, very close to Mary Wolstonecraft Shelley's declaration that marriage is merely monogamous prostitution. There are five overlapping amorous attractions in the play, and all of them are painfully out of balance. Happy ending or not, this play is tragic. I seriously think that only music could successfully express the underlying grief that Ibsen is ascribing to all male-female relationships.

It would make a superb opera! I wish I had the talent to write it.