The Alchymia Theatre’s production of “Rosmersholm” was performed with the support of the Rudolf Steiner Foundation. And since the show takes place in a tiny theater at the foundation’s Lincoln Avenue reading room, the audience is perhaps intended to muse on the possible connection between Steiner’s ideas of personal liberation and the more ambiguous intellectual complexity of “Rosmersholm,” one of Ibsen’s most challenging and rarely seen dramas.
Written between “The Wild Duck” and “Hedda Gabler,” “Rosmersholm” focuses on the relationship between Pastor John Rosmer (Patrick Bresnyan) and Rebecca West (Alicia Hall). A combination of early femme fatale and emancipated free-thinker, West encouraged the first Mrs. Rosmer to kill herself and has now set her sights on freeing the widowed Pastor (known by all as a moral beacon) from his joyless and moralist conception of Christianity.
But even as Rosmer embraces West’s version of spiritual and ethical freedom and progressive social ideas, he remains haunted by the “white horses” of the past. Eventually, West finds that she has been as influenced by Rosmer as the Pastor has by her and the two find themselves stuck in a very sticky mutual web with supernatural implications.
Perhaps the Steiner Foundation appreciated the play’s complex discussion of personal morality, or maybe it admired its apparent celebration of inner freedom. But regardless of why or where the independent Alchymia is doing this show, it certainly gives the rest of us a chance to see a solid try at a rarely produced piece of Ibsen.
In the hands of director Scott Fielding, the play certainly has plenty of weight and benefits greatly from a lovely and intimate setting from a Russian designer named Andrei Onegin. But this is a very long and intellectually based production with Ibsen’s series of debates given readings of great and often ponderous intensity.
There are some strengths to this approach–the direction is earnest, thoughtful and smart–and one senses that everyone involved knows the issues at the core of the play. But Fielding could also use a lighter touch and more of the author’s veiled sense of humor, not to mention a deeper appreciation of the human ambiguity that always undermines any societal debate.
The clearly capable Alicia Hall works like crazy at capturing every last persuasive nuance of Rebecca West, but she seems to try so terribly hard that we end up watching her sweat when we should be getting to know a character with more inner strength than Hall allows. Patrick Bresnyan is more relaxed–and therefore more credible–as Rosmer, but a rather manic intensity can also be seen in some of the minor players.
No translation is credited in the program (Fielding apparently did his own adaptation), which usually suggests a piecemeal English text from multiple sources. He would have been advised to pick a vibrant and modern version of the play. That would have been challenge enough for everyone.
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When: Through April 16
Where: Alchymia Theatre,
4249 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: 773-250-7262.
