When We Dead Awaken - Coronet

Thanks for the heads up, enjoyed Lady From The Sea and will definitely book to se this.

Excellent go see Pt2 has been rescheduled.

Pt1 was the most incomprehensible nights theatre I have ever attended, the audience sat on the stage and the 3 actors were in the auditorium.

Complete lack of narrative a man in the mud with a few tins reflecting on Pim. A mesmerising immersion in language without a narrative form only a chaotic collection of words with the a minimal hook as Pym floats enigmatically in the sea of syntax.

Bought the book, 40/50 word sentences, no punctuation and every time you read it your focus moved and any meaning is transposed, not sure if complete gobbledegook or genius and Beckett was just taking the p**s.

Despite this a play that resonated with me, had it booked before lockdown 1 and so pleased it is being resurrected,

Yes I saw that production (1990). There was a later one (2011) with Michael Pennington at the Print Room, but it is infrequently produced.

I had a £10 ticket back row H and was still very pleased with my view. I very much enjoyed it. Probably the only weaker points for me were when they veered into English. Glad to have seen it.

The Coronet is indeed a lovely venue, and the bar alone is a knockout!

Assumed I'd seen this play before, long ago - but in the event it didn't ring any bells. Frankly, I found it a tad underwhelming - mostly because it's so compressed (seems like there's at least 40 mins missing?) - but also because the characters seem to do little but make grand Pronouncements at each other about Art and Life. In a play that's largely about a man effectively turning a living woman into lifeless marble it's ironic that all of the characters seem pretty much carved in marble. It's so heavy on symbolism (even for Ibsen - Mountains, Bears, Life etc, and yes, an Avalanche) that if I hadn't known I'd have guessed it as Strindberg. I never became truly involved with any of the characters, who seemed pretty one note, nor with their dilemnas. Maybe it's better thought of as a kind of string quartet, with four solitary voices circling around and sometimes across one another? I'll certainly read it now, but I can't help wondering if a more conventional/complete production might better vivify the text? Perfectly good acting, though to my mind nothing special, and I was baffled by the decision to alternate between the original and English - given that I still needed the surtitles to understand the English passages. Glad I went, but a curiosity rather than a satisfying dramatic experience.

A symbolist play in all its glory and all its faults, the play of a mature man trying to make sense of life and its pathways and dead ends. There is a strongly compelling Norwegian character in the somewhat static presentation of the characters plight. They look as if those oddly vampiric people in Munch's paintings had been given voice, and the set designer at the Coronet theatre production has just got it right: three characters standing by a stream against a mountain of rubble and debris, such as all our lives are. All mountains are such piles of sediments, telling a story of turmoil and things that quietly passed and were buried underneath, giving them shape. An old sculptor whose best days are behind him gets back to his home town in Norway together with his much younger wife, whom he married after leaving Irene, his old muse, a woman he used to create his masterpiece and then abandoned searching for a fresh inspiration that never came. He is now, like his art, a museum piece, a has been. The return to Norway after travelling the world is both a defeat and a second chance. There he meets Irene again, the three of them - artist, wife and old muse- delivering their lines in the Norwegian summer twilight, undecided about what to do, whether to go on a fiord cruise or climb to the mountain above, an obvious symbolic choice between to keep coasting along or to go on exploring. In the event, they go for the climb, but in separate ways. Maia, the wife, still feeling in her the sap of life, goes with young Ulffheim, a bear hunter and a creature of the wild, nature in its cruel no nonsense primordial state, while Arnold and Irene do it on their own and at their own quiet pace, reminiscing and analysing past mistakes. At the top of the mountain they are caught by fog. Maia and Ulffheim descend to life, while the older lovers are left behind, happily lost in the mists of time, two ghosts awoken, haunting the earth forever. The symbolism used comes across perhaps as a bit crude to us modern audiences who "know", for we think we have learned so much along the path of history since Ibsen's times. But, have we, or are we still going round the same old terrain? That is the play's point. It is a bit too wordy and lacking in action, but it comes beautifully in the original Norwegian with surtitles, as an extended poem recited by the actors in the midst of that desolate stage, like characters in a Beckett play. As my friend said, there is no such thing as a bad Ibsen play.

This was a strange way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon but I felt moved by the performances and I think having a majority of the dialogue spoken in Norwegian added to the texture of this piece. The themes of decay and regret are explored very deeply and suited the Coronet Theatre very poignantly. I didn't find it particularly riveting but there is an intensity here which kept the audience gripped. This was my first time at the Coronet and I was slightly disheartened by the lack of a more diverse audience in Notting Hill, but the auditorium is absolutely gorgeous and I hope to return soon.