Gabriele Lavia Interpretes John Gabriel Borkman

Fortunately a Comic Ibsen

Abstract

The director, Marco Sciaccaluga, sets Ibsenian play in our day. The characters are on first-name terms among them. Gunhild smokes and drinks to express her state of depression. Dialogue is rewritten with colloquial cadences, not without obscene words. In conlusion, a production which wants to propose again the way of working of Ostermeier, but without the genius of the German director. However, it should be recognized that Gabriele Lavia’s performance helps us to discover the ironic, desecrating dimension of Ibsenian dramaturgy. In fact Ibsen is not a serious and also a bit boring writer, as critics usually think. The audience continually laughs at the lines of Lavia, who sometimes forces the text, but more often limits himself to extracting from the text what is entirely the Ibsenian intention. Naturally, Ibsenian comic quality is only the expression of a merciless and cruel intelligence, which looks at reality, without self-consolation.