Ibsen, Henrik (Johan)

Ibsen, Henrik [Johan] (1828–1906), playwright. Probably no foreign dramas caused debate so prolonged and impassioned as did the emergence of Ibsen's Norwegian plays in the American theatre. What was the first American production of Ibsen is uncertain, but Scandinavian performers did offer the world premiere of Ghosts to Chicago and other midwestern cities in 1882, and that same year the play later known as A Doll's House was offered in English as The Child Bride, albeit given a happy ending. The same play, with a similar happy ending, was presented by Helena Modjeska as Thora in 1883. However, it fell to an 1889 production of A Doll's House, faithfully translated and given its correct name, to spread Ibsen's fame and precipitate the controversy. To the leading anti‐Ibsenite, William Winter, Ibsenism was seen as “rank, deadly pessimism . . . a disease, injurious alike to the Stage and to the Public—in as far as it affects them at all—and therefore an evil to be deprecated.” Aligned against Winter and his allies were such other leading figures as Walter Prichard Eaton, William Dean Howells, and James Huneker. The pro‐Ibsen cause was taken up by such distinguished performers as Mrs. Fiske, Alla Nazimova, and Richard Mansfield. Their appearances in Ibsen plays gained the writer such widespread acceptance that by 1908 Eaton could write, “Ibsen is one of the most popular playwrights in America today.” Mrs. Fiske had done A Doll's House (1894), Hedda Gabler (1903), and Rosmersholm (1907). Late in her career she would star in Ghosts (1927). Nazimova did Hedda Gabler (1906), A Doll's House (1907), The Master Builder (1907), and Little Eyolf (1910). In 1906 Mansfield offered Peer Gynt. Blanche Bates and Nance O'Neill offered their Heddas about the same time and Ethel Barrymore her Nora. For a while interest in and enthusiasm for Ibsen dwindled, but Eleanora Duse's performance in The Lady from the Sea sparked a revival, as did the Theatre Guild's production of Peer Gynt with Joseph Schildkraut. Eva Le Gallienne and Walter Hampden both became advocates and appeared in several major revivals. Le Gallienne was the more doggedly loyal of the two. Beginning in 1925, when she portrayed Hilda Wangel in The Master Builder, she appeared in or staged numerous mountings, including several of Hedda Gabler (1928, 1934, 1948), John Gabriel Borkman (1926, 1946), and Rosmersholm (1935). She also played Mrs. Alving in Ghosts (1948). Hampden's most notable offering was An Enemy of the People (1928, 1937). A somewhat lesser performer, Blanche Yurka, headed revivals of The Wild Duck (1925, 1928), Hedda Gabler, and The Lady from the Sea (1929).

In the 1930s and 1940s a reaction set in, prompted by the perception that the problems Ibsen dealt with were no longer those of immediate concern to contemporary American society. Probably the most interesting production of this period was Thornton Wilder's adaptation of A Doll's House (1937), which Jed Harris presented with Ruth Gordon and Paul Lukas. Ibsen's appeal waxed again in the 1950s, which saw Arthur Miller's version of An Enemy of the People (1950), Lee Strasberg's staging of Peer Gynt (1951), and the Phoenix Theatre's productions of The Master Builder (1955) and Peer Gynt (1960). In the 1960s David Ross offered a much admired cycle of Ibsen plays Off Broadway. More recently there have been fewer major mountings, though some outstanding performances in Ibsen plays were seen. Claire Bloom essayed both Nora and Hedda with success in 1971, Susannah York played the latter in 1981, and Liv Ullmann shone as Nora and Mrs. Alving in 1982. That same year there was a short‐lived musical on Broadway called A Doll's Life that attempted to show Nora's life after she walked out. Stacy Keach made a fascinating Peer Gynt in the Central Park production in 1969, while Stephen Elliott and Philip Bosco were praised as the Stockmann brothers in a Lincoln Center production of An Enemy of the People in 1971. Beatrice Straight was Mrs. Alving in a long‐running Ghosts in 1973 with a young Victor Garber commended as Osvald, and Vanessa Redgrave was the star attraction in The Lady from the Sea in 1976 E. G. Marshall was quietly impressive as John Gabriel Borkman in 1980, but Janet McTeer's Nora in 1997 was a whirling dervish in a performance one either loved or loathed. The most recent Broadway Hedda was Kate Burton in 2001. The influence of Ibsen's sociological realism was immediately felt in American playwriting. James A. Herne was the first to openly acknowledge his debt, but his work was overshadowed in later decades by the plays of such writers as Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, both of whom looked to Ibsen as an exemplar.