Some decades ago in Melbourne, eminent English theatre director Sir Tyrone Guthrie told me the British theatre establishment (and its outposts in Canada, Australia and New Zealand) had done Henrik Ibsen a disservice by aligning his plays with the naturalistic conventions Konstantin Stanislavsky and the Moscow Arts Theatre had developed for the works of Anton Chekhov.

Ibsen’s work, he said, was much more symbolic, ironic and satirical than most of our earnest productions realised. Colin McColl, New Zealand’s most eminent director of Ibsen, calls them “gloom gloom sit in my room” productions and recently commented that much of the humour inherent in Ibsen’s plays has been lost in translation. Sir Tyrone believed Ibsen’s last four plays especially – The Master Builder, Little Eyolf, John Gabriel Borkman and When We Dead Awaken (the least produced of all) – needed to be liberated from naturalistic conventions.  

I believe the way Walking Shadows’ Director Iris Henderson and her Assistant Director Catriona Tipene have trimmed and amended the stodgy language in William Archer’s 1903 translation of When We Dead Awaken, then approached the staging and characterisation, would have delighted the late Sir Tyrone.  

As we take our seats, a man (Arnold), is seated on a block of white marble reading a newspaper while his relatively animated young wife (Maia) tries to get his attention. Lauren Stewart’s splendid touring set design – of white ‘marble’ blocks, some topped with translucent columns; chairs made from black reinforcing iron rods; a mountain-like peak upstage centre enshrouding a dark opening – sits ideally beneath the Dome in BATS’ upstairs space. The setting, it will emerge, is a mountain spa.

As a recording of NZ troubadour Luke Thompson’s ‘Walls’ plays in the background, Maia resorts to chatting with a member of the audience, expressing amazement that he hasn’t heard of her famous sculptor husband and sharing – with all of us – the secret of one of his silly phobias. Arnold’s buttoned up insularity is happily offset with her somewhat desperate flightiness.

Maia’s continued eye-contact with the audience throughout the play suggests it is her version of events we are witnessing. There is lots of non-verbal communication from Maia, beautifully played by Iris Henderson (stepping in for Cathy-Ellen Paul who played the original season), whereas there is no subtext to be discerned in the behaviours of others. As I see it, then, we see them as she judges them to be – although in one case there is more to be discovered than initially meets the eye.

Arnold Rubek – intensely articulated by Ryan Cundy – is a dissatisfied sculptor, preoccupied with his unfinished magnum opus, The Resurrection Day, and bemoaning his having to make his living with commissioned busts, sometimes of people’s pets. It’s tempting to see Arnold as Ibsen’s self-effacing send-up of the self-indulgent and pretentious artiste, although there may be a sincere cry in his claim that his work is not mere portraiture and there is always something cryptic to be found beneath the obvious replication of reality.

Maia is also dissatisfied because Arnold’s promise to take her to the top of the mountain to see the whole wide world has not eventuated. So when another hotel guest, Ulfheim the bear hunter – given a strong yet relaxed self-confidence by Tom Kereama – reveals his plan to go up the high mountain, she scores an invitation to accompany him.

Her plan to make Arnold jealous backfires, however, with the advent of a Strange Lady in White who turns out to be Irina Von Satow, Arnold’s long-lost model for The Resurrection Day, whose devotion to the artist was unrequited, causing her to leave him whereupon he lost his muse. Because he “captured her soul”, she now regards herself as “dead”.  

Within naturalistic conventions, her ‘death’ would be her state-of-mind, her companion would be (as described in some versions) a nurse or nun, and Irina’s happening to turn up may be questioned as a contrived coincidence of convenience to the playwright. In this production, however, as Irina drifts through their consciousness shadowed by a Woman in Black, it is easy to see her as a manifestation of Arnold’s preoccupation, or rather of Maia’s state-of-mind about his state-of-mind.

We can happily accept Catriona Tipene’s tragic yet radiantly spirited Irina as a ghost adrift in the head-space between Maia and Arnold, to which we are privy, and her shadow – The Woman in Black (Evangelina Telfar, who also designed and operates the sound) – as the “something cryptic” behind the obvious.

Thus what could have played out as turgid and prosaic in its juxtaposing (as Henderson identifies in her programme note) of love and hate, pain and comfort, humour and tragedy, regret and hope – not to mention highs and lows – is elevated into a rarefied atmosphere of psychological and metaphysical intrigue.

Arnold also promised Irina he’d take her to the heights to show her “the glory of the world” and now she’s the one who takes him aloft – where Maia is discovering aspects of Ulfheim to be feared, or is it a thrill she feels? Rather than scoff at the further contrivance of a storm (well manifested in sound) that envelops the aspiring climbers, we can use it as an agent to enhance our empathy with their inner beings.  

I’m not going to reveal how an avalanche is staged or who gets buried by it. Suffice to say its abstract achievement is ingenious, as befits the non-naturalistic way this production evokes subjective experience.  

When We Dead Awaken offers a rare opportunity to see Ibsen refreshed by a talented team of young practitioners. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Designed by world-renowned Art Deco architect, Louis Hay, the King George Hall in Bayview seems to be an odd choice of venue for the Walking Shadows presentation of When We Dead Awaken, yet its isolation from Napier, its austere furnishings and empty spaces prove to be the perfect match.

Iris Henderson’s Maia and Ryan Cundy’s Rubek effectively play the diminutive audience so that from the opening lines we are already drawn into the unfolding drama. Both are disillusioned; Maia with Rubek’s failed promises to take her to the mountain top and show her the world, Rubek with the loss of his artistic flair and muse. After a year of marriage both are looking for change.

Henderson’s performance is controlled; she plays to the audience yet retains a careful balance of desire and frustration. Cundy’s suffering artist is so immersed in his own losses, he cannot see those in front of him. In a performance strongly marked by compulsive, habitual actions, these artistic frustrations and human failings are constantly brought to the fore.

Catriona Tipene’s performance of the near hysterical Irina is a sustained antithesis of rawness and passion that holds the audience throughout.

Tom Kereama’s affable Ulfheim is subtle and understated. His innuendoes and quick retorts lift the darker moments to bring Ibsen’s humour to the fore. And Evangelina Telfar’s woman in black is an enduring yet understated shadowy presence.

The interplay between characters is fast and stark, a feat paralleled by Lauren Stewart’s minimalistic set and, given the nature of the venue, even more limited lighting design.

The only negative is the occasionally overpowering nature of the score. The limitations of the hall, the positioning of the speakers, and unavoidable rumble of continually passing trucks sometimes overwhelm the actions and dialogue. Yet despite this, When We Dead Awaken is, in the words of an audience member, “A powerful, awesome production.”

Given the number in the cast matches that of the audience, these players stay professional to the end; they could be playing to any size house given the passion and commitment of their performance.  

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Just about everything costs someone something, and high achieving costs highly. What will it cost to ‘awaken’ Arnold Rubek, an artist who’s gone ‘dead’ because his creating of masterpieces is way back in the past; when all he has been able to do ever since, to earn a crust, or use up his left-over life, is to churn out conventional portraits, using mere technique without any flicker of a creative spark?

What did painting his major masterpiece (ironically entitled ‘Resurrection’) cost, not only to himself but to others? Especially to the woman, then young, who had posed nude for its central human figure, and who still believes it was the baby they’d made together? What has it cost his wife, a different woman, to have had to endure living for the past ten years alongside this morose, uncommunicative, maybe daft, ‘dead’ man? 

When We Dead Awaken was the great Norwegian Henrik Ibsen’s last play (or, maybe, last completed play) and I’m delighted to get the chance to see it done, and done here quite competently, in a touring production by a fairly young cast.

Despite the text’s evidently having been based on William Archer’s translation from Norwegian of 1903, it’s been intelligently cut and tweaked so that none of the dialogue feels quaint, clunky or verbose. Creating even remotely realistic stage-settings would have been a huge ask, and, wisely, no attempt has been made to do so. Lauren Stewart has designed simply an empty stage-floor with a couple of oddly formed metal chairs and a table (moved around), in front of a white screen.  Even the storm at the end is conveyed simply by sound (apart from, of course, by dialogue and acting).

Nearly everything, then, depends upon the actors, and they do well. Iris Henderson, the director, gives plenty of life to playing the exasperated wife, Maia Rubek, the only reasonably ordinary character of the five, who also acts as a kind of interlocutor with the audience, before the action begins, and provides a way into it.

Ryan Cuddy plays Arnold Rubek, as a young-middle-aged grump rather than an aging curmudgeon, so that his state-of-being is weirder than can be attributed, largely, to the waning powers and vitality of getting seriously older. 

‘The Strange Lady’, Irina Von Satow, who had been his model, is played by Catriona Tipene. In her earlier appearances ominously silent, once she gets one-to-one with Arnold, she is very credible in her rendition of the intensity of the character’s mixed emotions. As the director’s programme note indicates, she juxtaposes fierce “love and hate” towards the man who’s haunted her life.

Dressed wholly in white, she’s usually followed by ‘The Woman in Black’, silent (apart from a few words at the end), enigmatically threatening, played by Evangelina Telfar whi is also the show’s composer, sound designer and sound operator.

Tom Kereama plays ‘The Bear-killer’, Ulfheim, as formidably physical, latently violent, harshly direct, a man of the mountain-country.

The production works, and it’s good value.

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

This is Ibsen stripped right down to the beating heart of the play. The Walking Shadows Theatre Collective has rescued Ibsen’s When We Dead Awaken from its dusty corner in the Museum of Obscure Minor Classics. They’ve scraped off the 19th-century decor (not a square millimetre of red velvet, cut crystal or turned dark oak to be seen), and set the new trimmed-down version in no particular time or country, against the relentlessly sparse backdrop of the Performance Laboratory, all steel girders and concrete. They’ve found the spark at the centre of the antique text (first published December 1899) and they’ve blown it into glowing life. 

Walking Shadows have many grounds for congratulating themselves about this production. One is that they’ve had the nerve to tackle When We Dead Awaken in the first place. Their own publicity material describes it as “infamous”. Others haven’t even been that positive: “notoriously treacherous” is a fairly representative critical comment. The publicity material also tells us that this is the play’s New Zealand premiere, and the reason for the 116-year-long delay is possibly not too hard to find.

For a start, the plot presents its challenges. Sculptor Arnold Rubek feels that he has wasted his artistic potential after creating his masterpiece, The Resurrection. His wife Maia is bored and frustrated; she accuses Arnold of indifference and, worse still, of failing to come through with his promise to act as her guide to the wonders of life.

The earthy, near-animal Ulfheim the bear killer seems to offer Maia an alternative to her husband’s cold and stony indifference. Arnold wants Irina, the model he used when he was creating The Resurrection, to help him unlock the creative fire within once again. But Irina has never recovered from the perplexities of her intense but chaste relationship with Arnold.  

The atmosphere of the play, sombre enough on the facts of the plot alone, is further darkened with a heavy layer of symbolism. When We Dead Awaken is a ‘lit crit’ feast, with enough metaphors per sentence to keep squads of English Honours students occupied for days. But with sheer enthusiasm and skill, Walking Shadows transform and transcend the creaking plot and the knee deep symbols.

What they give us is bare souls twisting in torment, struggling with demons from the past, tearing at themselves and others, pleading, accusing and cajoling as they search, hope against hope, for a way to be freed into happiness and light. And in a real design and acting tour de force, they make us sympathise with and even like the characters, and care about what happens to them.

Cathy-Ellen Paul gives us a Maia who is bursting with frustrated life and feeling, shrewd, sincere and impulsive in turn. This is a sustained performance with plenty of light and shade, that cleverly avoids potential traps in a character who could easily come across as selfish and/or lightweight.

Ryan Cundy performs what I personally think is a miracle by making the pompous and egocentric artist Arnold Rubek sympathetic; a troubled man who’s quietly overwhelmed by the consciousness of his own failures of love and creative frustration, and who finds it near impossible to lift his head above his own troubles and reach out to other people. I’m still trying to work out how Cundy did it; as with Paul’s Maia, there is a saving quality of sincerity in his performance, and I think another factor is that, while Cundy’s Rubek clearly has a major talent for hurting other people, he doesn’t mean to – he just doesn’t know any better.

Catriona Tipene too has a major acting task on her hands, in the form of bitter, near-mad Irina. This is another persuasive and sustained performance, which skilfully walks a fine line between the emotional intensity appropriate to the character and Bedlamite melodrama. The phrase ‘the poetry of madness’ comes unasked to my mind when I reflect on her performance, and I offer it here with no apologies.

Aaron Pyke presents a clever, convincing interpretation of yet another difficult character, the fairly implausible Ulfheim, as a Kiwi backcountry bloke. Are his T-shirt and shorts a bit more ‘Nerd of the Forest’ than ‘red-handed Bear Killer’? No matter – Pyke didn’t let that, or anything else, hold him back. 

Christopher Watts and Cassandra Botros give us strong, solid supporting performances as the hotel concierge and woman in black respectively.

The verbal and physical interplay between the characters is of consistently high quality: inventive, well-rehearsed, highly successful.

Christopher Watts (stage management and lighting design), Evangelina Telfar (music and sound), and Lauren Stewart, Claire Noble, Emile Mutch and Jessie Bukholt-Payne (set and props) demonstrate that you don’t need a huge budget to stage the classics effectively. 

Director Iris Henderson took the plunge in choosing to put on When We Dead Awaken in the first place. It is a risk that’s paid off. She can be proud of what she and the rest of the collective have achieved.

The acoustics at the Performance Laboratory aren’t ideal – when the action moves towards the back of the stage, there’s an echo/deadening effect that can make it hard to hear what the actors are saying. On the first night, the actors are just a tad stiff and mannered at the very start, but once they warm up, they never look back.

This production is an unusual opportunity for Ibsen-lovers and for theatre-lovers more generally, both for its quality and as a one-off. Make an effort to see When We Dead Awaken, it’s worth it. On at The Performance Laboratory, 8 Kent Terrace; Saturday 27 February-Monday 29 February, 6.30pm. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer