Little Eyolf E-Book

Henrik Ibsen

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Ibsen's forensic examination of a marriage as it falls apart, in a version by Richard Eyre. How is a life well-lived? Alfred Allmers comes home to his wife Rita and makes a decision. Casting aside his writing, he dedicates himself to raising his son. But one event is about to change his life forever. Little Eyolf was first performed in 1894. This new version, adapted and directed by Richard Eyre, premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 2015. The third in a trilogy of revelatory Ibsens, Little Eyolf follows Richard Eyre's multi-award-winning adaptations of Ghosts (Almeida, West End and BAM, New York), and Hedda Gabler (Almeida and West End).

Leseprobe

Henrik Ibsen

LITTLE EYOLF

in a new version by

Richard Eyre

from a literal translation by    Karin and Anne Bamborough

with an Introduction by Richard Eyre

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Original Production

Epigraph

Characters

Little Eyolf

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Introduction

Richard Eyre

If I said that to watch Little Eyolf is a terrifying experience you might think I was being histrionic, and if I said that to experience that terror is enlightening, you might think I was being pretentious. But you’d be wrong: as with Greek tragedy, you’d be seeing the white bones of human experience. You’d be looking in the face of truth, which is always a journey into light, however painful.

Imagine that your only child has drowned and the child’s body is still missing. Incredulity will give way to numbness, numbness to anger, anger to despair, despair to exhaustion, exhaustion, perhaps, to acceptance, and acceptance, possibly, to hope. Add heartbreak to this – a metaphor that seems fanciful until it becomes undeniably literal – and then imagine that you and your partner don’t know how to comfort each other, barely know each other, don’t love each other, don’t want to be with each other. That’s the fate of the grieving, unloving, couple in for whom there is no solace but each other. Tennyson’s line from could serve as their epitaph: ‘On the bald streets breaks the blank day’.