AUDITORIUM

✮✮✮ 1/2 Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts Belvoir St Theatre | Sydney directed by Eamon Flack It is late 19th century, and the widowed Mrs Alving is building an orphanage so that her dead husband’s money can be released from her conscience. She is still unable to find peace, even though her poisonous marriage is now over, after having suffered in silence for decades. Ibsen’s Ghosts is about the incontrovertible links between past and present. It looks at how we are controlled by beliefs,

✮✮✮ 1/2 Simon Stone's Ibsen House Toneelgroep | Amsterdam directed by Simon Stone Simon Stone has turned yet again to the works of Henrik Ibsen as a source of inspiration. Ibsen House is produced in cooperation with the Toneelgroep Amsterdam and performed at the companies’ home base, the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg. Over the course of last season Stone has worked together with the Netherland’s largest repertory company on no less then three productions. This new piece, however,

✮✮✮✮ 1/2 Ibsen's The Wild Duck in a version by Simon Stone & Chris Ryan Barbican Theatre | London directed by Simon Stone At the heart of Ibsen’s Wild Duck is the killer concept of the ‘life-lie’ – the big fib that we all rely on, consciously or not, in order to get by. It’s cognitive dissonance at its most benevolent. The question is what happens when a well-meaning Samaritan comes along to kick the psychological crutches away. It’s testament to both the self-sufficiency and

✮✮✮✮ Ibsen's Ghosts Trafalgar Studios | London directed by Richard Eyre Ibsen’s play was written to shock, and succeeded; at the time, the Daily Telegraph christened it “a loathsome sore unbandaged, a dirty act done publically... literary carrion.” The play’s carnal subversions and frenzies now sound muffled in a way that Nora’s final door slam of A Doll’s House isn’t, quite, but Richard Eyre’s harrowing staging means that these ghosts have lost none of their power to haunt.