• “It’s only a play”: Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879), Adamson’s Wife (2019), and the Relevance of Historical Theatre
• Catherine Quirk (bio)

Between late 2017 and the closure of the theatres in March 2020, in London alone there were at least a dozen productions of Henrik Ibsen’s plays. To mention only a few of these, at the Almeida, Robert Icke’s 2018 adaptation of The Wild Duck moved the action into the modern day, anglicized some of Ibsen’s less accessible Norwegian names, and in an era of “fake news,” emphasized Ibsen’s thematic preoccupation with truth and lies. Elinor Cook’s 2017 The Lady from the Sea, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah at the Donmar Warehouse, transposed the action to an unnamed Caribbean island in the 1950s, emphasizing the thematic claustrophobia and entrapment of the piece. Stef Smith’s Nora, which premiered at Tramway, Glasgow in March 2019, was mid-run at the Young Vic when theatres closed. Smith’s adaptation modernized [End Page 231] the piece, too: the structure and story followed those of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, but in each act three separate timelines—three Noras—intersected to comment on the unchanging nature of the oppression Ibsen’s Nora faced. Tanika Gupta also turned to A Doll’s House, setting her 2019 Lyric Hammersmith production in late-nineteenth-century Kolkata. The shift in setting, though much of the dialogue and action remained the same, brought out new elements of oppression, and highlighted the enduring relevance of the marginalized figure’s search for freedom. By emphasizing imperial oppression alongside that of gender, Gupta shifted Ibsen’s social commentary to fit a present moment much more deeply concerned with intersectionality. Each of these examples, in adapting Ibsen’s works to be presented to a twenty-first-century audience, emphasize the continued relevance of the plays’ themes, characters, and social commentary.¹

Next to Shakespeare, Ibsen is one of the most frequently adapted European playwrights, appearing annually in productions all over the globe. Shakespeare’s ubiquity is often credited to the apparent universality of characters such as Hamlet and Juliet, and of the messages and themes underlying many of his most-performed plays. These stories translate well into other languages, time periods, and situations, and can easily be adapted—as countless productions over the centuries since Shakespeare’s death have proved—to speak directly to seemingly distinct cultural contexts. Ibsen’s continued and international popularity, in contrast, seems to stem more from the enduring relevance of his scenarios. Julie Holledge, Jonathan Bollen, Frode Helland, and Joanne Tompkins, writing of A Doll’s House (1879) specifically, note that

The conditions that supported the promotion and dissemination of Et dukkehjem during this first wave of international success disappeared with the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914, but the connections between the play and other sexual vectors of social change have never disappeared. The character of Nora has continued to attract artists who are intent on challenging social discrimination.²

The initial “conditions” Holledge et al note as fostering the success of Ibsen in the last decades of the nineteenth century still characterize much of the world: the injustices and oppressive practices Ibsen wrote against continue today, if perhaps in different forms. Awo Mana Asiedu, writing of Tracie [End Page 232] Chimo Utoh-Ezeajugh’s Nneora: An African Doll’s House (2005), credits this continued adaptability and relevance to “the human element, which is universally recognisable, that makes it possible for a play written centuries earlier to have abiding relevance when translated into another culture in another time.”³ From their earliest performances, Ibsen’s social problem plays have continued to address the oppressive tendencies of society. The specific instances of oppression shift over time and by location, as the plays are adapted to fit new circumstances, but the underlying need to fight for change remains constant.

Playwright Samuel Adamson has developed a reputation as an adaptor, and particularly as an adaptor of Ibsen. In this article, I examine Adamson’s most recent interaction with Ibsen: Wife (Kiln Theatre, 2019). As Adamson noted in a July 2020 Zoom conversation with Kiln artistic director Indhu Rubasingham...

• “这只是一场戏”：易卜生的《玩偶之家》（1879 年）、《亚当森的妻子》 （2019 年）和历史剧的相关性
• 凯瑟琳怪癖（生物）

从2017年底到 2020 年 3 月剧院关闭之间，仅在伦敦就有至少十多部亨利克·易卜生的戏剧作品。仅提及其中一些，在阿尔梅达，罗伯特·伊克 2018 年改编的野鸭将动作带入了现代，将易卜生的一些不太容易理解的挪威名字英语化，在“假新闻”时代，强调了易卜生的主题专注于真理和谎言。埃莉诺·库克（Elinor Cook）的 2017 年The Lady from the Sea由 Kwame Kwei-Armah 在 Donmar Warehouse 执导，将动作转移到 1950 年代一个无名的加勒比海岛，强调主题幽闭恐惧症和作品的陷阱。史蒂夫·史密斯的诺拉于 2019 年 3 月在格拉斯哥有轨电车上首映，在影院关闭时在 Young Vic 放映中。史密斯的改编也使[End Page 231]作品现代化：结构和故事遵循易卜生的《玩偶之家》，但在每一幕中，三个独立的时间线——三个诺拉——相交以评论易卜生的诺拉所面临的压迫的不变性质。Tanika Gupta 也转向玩偶之家，将她 2019 年的抒情哈默史密斯作品设定在 19 世纪晚期的加尔各答。尽管大部分对话和行动保持不变，但场景的转变带来了新的压迫元素，并突出了边缘化人物寻求自由的持久相关性。通过在强调性别压迫的同时强调帝国压迫，古普塔改变了易卜生的社会评论，以适应当下更加关注交叉性的时刻。这些例子中的每一个，在改编易卜生的作品以呈现给 21 世纪的观众时，都强调了戏剧主题、人物和社会评论的持续相关性。¹

除了莎士比亚，易卜生是最常被改编的欧洲剧作家之一，每年都会出现在全球各地的作品中。莎士比亚的无所不在通常归功于哈姆雷特和朱丽叶等角色的明显普遍性，以及他许多表演最出色的戏剧背后的信息和主题。这些故事可以很好地翻译成其他语言、时间段和情况，并且很容易被改编——正如莎士比亚死后几个世纪以来无数作品所证明的那样——直接与看似不同的文化背景对话。相比之下，易卜生的持续和国际知名度似乎更多地源于他的剧本的持久相关性。Julie Holledge、Jonathan Bollen、Frode Helland 和 Joanne Tompkins，撰写了《玩偶之家》(1879) 具体来说，请注意

随着 1914 年欧洲战争的爆发，支持Et dukkehjem在第一波国际成功中推广和传播的条件消失了，但该剧与社会变革的其他性媒介之间的联系从未消失。诺拉的性格继续吸引着那些有意挑战社会歧视的艺术家。²

Holledge 等人指出，促成易卜生在 19 世纪最后几十年取得成功的最初“条件”仍然是世界大部分地区的特征：易卜生所反对的不公正和压迫性做法今天仍在继续，即使可能以不同的形式出现。Awo Mana Asiedu，Tracie [End Page 232] Chimo Utoh-Ezeajugh 的Nneora：一个非洲娃娃的房子（2005 年），将这种持续的适应性和相关性归功于“人类元素，这是普遍认可的，这使得戏剧成为可能几个世纪前写的，在另一个时代翻译成另一种文化时具有持久的相关性。” ³从最早的表演开始，易卜生的社会问题剧就一直在解决社会的压迫倾向。压迫的具体实例随着时间和地点的变化而变化，因为戏剧适应了新的环境，但为改变而战的潜在需求保持不变。

剧作家塞缪尔·亚当森（Samuel Adamson）以改编者而闻名，尤其是作为易卜生的改编者。在本文中，我研究了亚当森最近与易卜生的互动：妻子（Kiln Theatre，2019）。正如亚当森在 2020 年 7 月与 Kiln 艺术总监 Indhu Rubasingham 的一次 Zoom 对话中指出的那样……