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Dir: Anthony Page.
Cast: Paul Hilton, Helen McCrory, Malcolm Sinclair, Paul Moriarty, Veronica Quilligan, Peter Sullivan
Description: A new version by Mike Poulton, of Henrik Ibsen's drama, with Helen McCrory and Paul Moriarty. The enigmatic Rebecca West yields an influence over the Rosmer family. Directed by Anthony Page.
Trains: Tube: Highbury & Islington/Angel 
Phone: 0207359 4404
Website: www.almeida.co.uk
Remarkable: Helen McCrory pulls out the emotional stops as the companion of the pastor Johannes Rosmer (Paul Hilton) in the Ibsen production at the Almeida
Haunted by the ghost of a mentally disturbed wife who killed herself, pervaded by a sense of secrecy, sexual guilt and pent-up desire, this Ibsen masterpiece of psychological drama may sound like one of those scarlet lady with a past plays, penned by gentlemen playwrights in the 1890s.
The merit of Anthony Page's lucid, refreshing production of Rosmersholm, which comes in an unpoetic but accessible, modern version by Mike Poulton, is that it never succumbs to the temptations of melodrama.
There is none of the solemn mustiness still afflicting Ibsen's revivals. Not until the third act revelations does a remarkable Helen McCrory pull out the emotional stops.
Designer Hildegard Bechtler, inspired by a Danish, artist-contemporary of Ibsen, creates a flowerladen, pastel-shaded drawing room with a rural view that reeks of melancholia, lit in sombre hues by Peter Mumford.
Portraits of famous ancestors of the hero, Paul Hilton's sexually limp Johannes Rosmer, a pastor who has lost his faith and unfrocked himself, are everywhere. These ancestors and the past itself dominate the play.
For Ibsen offers a thrilling view of Norway on the verge of cultural, political and sexual revolution.
The Socialists have taken power. The first flushes of feminism have been observed. Radicals eager for liberation are fighting to terminate the Church's power as an omnipotent, moral arbiter.
Newspapers have joined the battle. The dynamic, right-wing Standard, no relation of our own organ, is prominently fighting for the old morality. Here is a fierce conflict between the forces of reaction and modernity, a conflict that still reverberates today.
When the play starts McCrory's attractively becalmed Rebecca West, once devoted companion to Rosmer's dead wife, Beata, is living with him in respectable, sex-free companionship.
She sits one sunny morning in a lilac dress, engaged in lady-like crocheting. But then there arrives Beata's brother, prim Doctor Kroll, the local headmaster prone to anger and self-pity, whom Malcolm Sinclair plays to stiff, grim-faced perfection.
Secrets and revelations begin to be prised from the past, that secluded country where Rebecca displayed no liberal compassion.
Hilton's meekly depressed Rosmer, a man who usually speaks as if poised on the point of apologising for being himself, reveals he has joined the anti-religious ranks and now rejects his old, moralising religious self. There is no missing the fact that Rebecca has mind-washed him, coaxed him to this new position.
The process by which the secrets of Rebecca's life are discovered, her sexually deviant past illuminated, her role in Beata's death confessed, resembles an inexorable journey into the darkness of one murderous heart.
Miss McCrory, who in the first two acts disappointingly conveys no sense of disturbance or passion beneath Rebecca's calm facade, makes amends in her dazzling, climactic, confessional scene.
This is a tremendous feat of emotional acting: the poised, cool Rebecca loses control. Tears soundlessly streak her face. Her voice cracks. Her face wears a look of anguish.
The resolution of the couple's moral crisis is staged with a dispassionate calm, appropriate to this great, psychological, mystery drama.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
