Henrik Ibsen

Nine Full-Cast BBC Radio Dramatisations

De: Henrik Ibsen

Narrado por: David Threlfall, Full Cast, Harriet Walters, Helen Baxendale, Indira Varma, Lesley Manville, Nicholas Farrell, Samuel West

Often described as 'the father of realism', Henrik Ibsen was a pioneer of modernist drama. He influenced playwrights as diverse as George Bernard Shaw and Oscar Wilde, and is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare.

Included in this collection are adaptations of his tragicomic masterpiece The Wild Duck, his complex and compelling play Rosmersholm, the epic drama Brand and the tragedy John Gabriel Borkman. Ibsen's A Doll's House is relocated to 1879 India in Tanika Gupta's Audio Drama Award-winning dramatisation, while the provocative and scandalous Ghosts is adapted by Richard Eyre, with the cast of his Olivier Award-winning Almeida Theatre production.

Also featured are vibrant dramatisations of Hedda Gabler, whose desperate heroine is trapped in a suffocating marriage; The Lady from the Sea, about a woman torn between security and passion; and An Enemy of the People, in which a whistleblower reveals an inconvenient truth and is vilified for it.

The casts of these stunning dramas include David Threlfall, Nicholas Farrell, Helen Baxendale, Indira Varma, Lesley Manville and Harriet Walter.

Track listing:

The Wild Duck

Rosmersholm

Brand

John Gabriel Borkman

A Doll's House

Ghosts

Hedda Gabler

The Lady from the Sea

An Enemy of the People

©2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P)2020 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Touching, Surprising, Beautiful

This story is most engaging and really underlines prophetically where mankind has trevelled in the last 200 year regarding the relationship between a husband and a wife. What happens next? Who knows?

A Doll’s House

As everyone has said, the version of A Doll’s House is worth the credit or payment by itself. The production values and overall direction by Nadia Molinari is superb. Indira Varma is amazing - a remarkable performance. Toby Stephens is also very good. It enlivens and revivifies the entire play, which is a well-worn classic.
The production of The Wild Duck is also very good. While it doesn’t revolutionize the play the way the version of A Doll’s House does, it’s a very good production.
As well as for entertainment, these recordings are a good way to study and review the plays, especially if you have a test coming.

A Doll’s House Alone is Worth the Credit

Most radio productions are terrible. Hedda Gabler is flat and the rest are poor. But the Indian adaptation of A Doll’s Hose is first rate in every way!

Ibsen destroyed!

Ibsen deserves ten stars any day, but the adaptations are travesties.

If I wanted to listen to something set in India, I would have chosen one of the many beautiful plays or novels from India that are available here.

I wanted Ibsen and Ibsen is Norwegian. Whether anyone likes it or not, language forms culture. I am not a fan of transpositions. Often they are insulting to the culture into which they are set, as here with India.

In other plays, many actors are miscast. The brilliant Harriet Walters, whom I love, is unconvincing in Hedda Gabler and Michael Maloney overacts to an annoying degree unusual even for him, to name but two examples.

This is an appalling excuse of a title I wish I’d avoided.