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Chasing the dreams of old
JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN
Donmar Theatre
JOHN Gabriel Borkman is Ibsen’s last great play.
Written in 1896 and here adapted by David Eldridge, it follows Borkman, a banking wizard jailed for five years for “financial mismanagement.”
Borkman (Ian McDiarmid) has spent the last three years living in seclusion in the upper floor of his former home.
This he owes to his wife’s twin sister Ella (Penelope Wilton), who now owns the property and whom he shielded while the rest of the financial empire collapsed.
Borkman’s wife Gunhild lives on the floor below, but they have no contact.
Ella has taken in the Borkman’s son Erhart (Ralf Spall), who is now in his 20s, but Gunhild has now returned to ask for him back.
Mrs Borkman clings to her parental rights while her sister, with equal passion battles for his love.
Ella still a wealthy widow has lost the meaning of love – it turns out that Borkman, romantically attached to her during their youth, ditched her for Gunhild and a bank manager’s position.
Meanwhile he dreams of a return as a captain of high finance, and emerging as a national hero.
Young Erhrart yearns to escape from this tug of love and tangled umbilical cords.
He has caught the eye of a local widow – seven years his senior but with a very healthy bank balance.
But undaunted, Wilton challenges the sterility imposed on her – she needs the love of Erhart, which she sees as an emotionally powerful challenge to grab or recapture a brief happiness.
McDiarmid’s Borkman almost captures that lunatic certainty of the deluded old who dream of reliving past glories.
But I’m afraid melodrama took over, with a couple of heavyweight clichés helping this along.
As Borkman leaves his rooms after three years to walk in the raging blizzard, he cries out: “Going into the storm of life”.
I knew it would end not in tears but with hypothermia – no King Lear comparison here. The rage is quickly expended.
Michael Grandage’s direction will always draw the discerning to the Donmar, but on this occasion these people arouse our curiosity not our compassion.
Borkman is a liberator, but he is vain and doomed to die ignominiously on a park bench.
The evening belongs to Wilton – a mistress of her craft – left in her frozen fastness with despair as her only constant companion.
Until March 17
0870 060 6624
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