The Toronto Theatre Review: Crow’s Rosmersholm

By Ross

The space is wide open yet draped, grieving for a past loss that still hangs in the air. The music vibrates inside the room, filling us with a tense heaviness that lingers, as portraits of the lineage stare down judging the woman who runs in and throws open those tall French doors. It feels haunted, this sitting room inside Rosemersholm, the manor house, and the 1886 play written with dynamic purpose by the Norweigan playwright, Henrik Ibsen. But her youthful energy, embodied strongly by an excellent Virgilia Griffith (Soulpepper’s King Lear/Queen Goneril) as the liberated and determined Miss Rebecca West, is fighting hard against the white-horse ghost that hangs in the room’s air like a layer of dust on those grey dense coverings, elegantly lit by designer Kimberly Purtell (Stratford’s Frankenstein Revived) accompanied by a solid sound design by Thomas Ryder Payne (Crow’s Bad Roads). As directed with a sharp eye for spacial tension and conflict by Chris Abraham (Crow’s The Master Plan; Stratford’s Much Ado About Nothing), the play lives deeply inside the tension between the past and the rebellious new, framing their forms between narratives of conflict and radicalism.

Seeing this play the night after the second Presidential debate between Kamala Harris and that old angry privileged white man, it’s impossible to not see the many parallels that exist in that first act. Especially when we start listening to the elitist vitriol that spews forth from the mouth of Governor Andreas Kroll, played with a determined force by Ben Carlson (Stratford’s The Taming of the Shrew). With old guard Kroll layering the upcoming town election in clearly defined shades of fearmongering and racial/social dismissal, the framing around power and privilege becomes crystal clear and transparent, with the new radicals fighting hard against this tyranny, trying hard against the odds to create a framework for social equality and growth. But the play has more on its mind than a commentary on the war of words being fought in America now. It’s far more complex, mysterious, and subtle than all that.

Rosmersholm, as adapted by playwright Duncan Macmillan (People Places and Things), tells the story of the privileged John Rosmer, played compassionately by Jonathon Young (Electric Company’s Betroffenheit), an aristocrat who has given up his role as Pastor and the town’s moral compass after losing his faith. He is the dutiful owner of the family manor, Rosmersholm. Both are haunted, not just by his wife’s recent suicide, an act of madness that still hangs heavy in the air in the form of guilt and grief, but by the generations of dead men staring down at him from the walls judging him on his newfound idealistic desires for social reform and equality. And on how he crossed this bridge to be in this new place of thought.

Helping him challenge his past convictions, Rebecca West stands beside him, dressed with intent by costume designer Ming Wong (CS’s The Inheritance), sometimes hunched over with the weight of the past, but also held together by their deep curiosity and exploration of morality and political activism. This newly found struggle for social change and growth does not hang well on these walls or on the Governor’s ears. It’s no enlightened lighthouse to this privileged politician, just a threat to his position and the old-school, way-of-the-world that has served him well for far too long.

The battleground is littered with references we can connect to, especially when the Governor claims the “Vote will be a bloodbath,” with those who are not wise enough to vote accordingly swinging the election away from him. The loudest voices will win, he says, and although he is referring to those radical liberals, we see how this, like that current wanna-be tyrant, is a projection of the same tactics the Governor is willing to embrace on the day he makes his long-awaited visit to his brother-in-law, the Pastor. Memories and grief have kept him away from this house, revolving around the suicide of his sister, who sat in this very room, staring out at the bridge through that same window. Perfectly formulated by set and prop designer Joshua Quinlan (Stratford’s Casey and Diana), the sister contemplated and finally acted on a mission that her brother (and her husband) are still in need of processing. The accusational anger still lingers within his frame, seemingly etched in the hardened position he is determined to take.

Unpacked by a cast of utter pros, these actors fill the space with theatrically progressive, strongly embodied formulations and stances that resonate wholeheartedly. Starting with the many servants that rush in and out following orders by the aristocracy of the house, who are perfectly embodied by the character of Mrs. Helseth, played intelligently by Kate Hennig (Shaw’s Gypsy), the parallels are laid out shockingly by a playwright long gone, leading towards the strongly held tug-of-war between liberation and servitude, embodied by the complex radical and Lighthouse publisher, Mr. Peter Mortensgaard, played powerfully by Beau Dixon (Tarragon’s Orphan Song) and the former teacher and mentor, Mr. Ulrik Brendel, portrayed with effervescent brilliance by Diego Matamoros (Tarragon’s Post-Democracy). Two symbols of change that enliven this fascinating production, but are not given the opportunity to deliver themselves forward into the argument near enough.

The play is overflowing with ideas that circle around the spirit of the dead and the aristocracy of the present that holds power and sway over the masses, even when they are trying to discard it. It’s a complex unraveling, that sometimes feels so relevant, and sometimes meanders clumsily through the surrounding landscape in the dark, losing their way and leaving us out there in the dark trying to find our own way back. The play has been called one of Ibsen’s most complex, multilayered, and ambiguous plays, and we can definitely see why. The white horse ghost is continually referred to by the staff as a harbinger of death, and in one particularly telling moment, we find Griffith’s Rebecca standing dressed in alluring white in the exact spot where the ghostly apparition was said to be last seen. It’s a marker, possibly, for what is to come, when the Rosmerian view of life ennobles but kills laughter and happiness.

Rosmersholm leaves us wondering about its overarching theme and views, as they make their way down in the darkness to embrace their shared fate. It’s detailed and complex in those last moments, without delivering a clarity I was hoping for. But it also delivers some of the strongest and most detailed performances of the year, in a play that excels in its mystical embodiment of political conflict and radical enlightenment, while unwrapping grief and faith for us all to examine as we wander out into the night air questioning the meaning of it all. And wondering about how Ibsen could comment so well on the current political climate of our world.