Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Infotainment
Ibsen magic to come alive at Egyptian pyramids
IANS STORIES
Oslo, December 11, 2005
Norwegians have finalised plans to use the pyramids of Giza as a set for the 100th anniversary of the death of playwright Henrik Ibsen to be marked next year.
A concert version of the play Peer Gynt will be performed in the desert sands of Cairo in October as the grand finale after ten months of Ibsen in 2006, starting Jan 16.
The festivities will see the staging of his famous plays such as The Ghosts, The Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler and The Enemy of the People.
"Ibsen can still be deadly," says Bentein Baardson, the head of the celebrations, outlining the imposing number of Ibsen productions from around the world in the programme.
Henrik Ibsen died in Kristiania, as Oslo was then known, on May 23, 1906, at the age of 78. His dramas against bourgeois hypocrisy and delusions made him an honoured national poet even during his lifetime.
But he never received the Nobel Prize for literature, which was first awarded five years before his death.
In Oslo, visitors to the Opera Café can see the table and chair used for decades by the author with extremely bushy sideburns.
On the main street in front of the café are legendary quotations from Ibsen's works set up in plaster for the anniversary, such as "Take the delusions away from an ordinary person and you take away their happiness" (The Wild Duck).
Norwegian youths will be given free copies of Ibsen books to help them get to know a writer they may not be well-acquainted with. Ibsen's flat in the Arbiensgate Street has been restored to its former condition with original furniture.
Despite Norway's amazing oil and gas riches, the country is spending a fraction of the 250 million Krones ($38.6 million) that Denmark spent on the 200th birth anniversary of fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875).
Theatre bosses have been grumbling and newspaper critics complaining about Norway's poor management of the national cultural heritage.
Perhaps Ibsen would have added a line from his own play, The Master Builder: "After such a good meal you don't save on the tip."
© HT Media Ltd. 2005.