Information, reviews, and miscellaneous shorts focusing on professional, nonprofit theater—from a Southeast Minnesota perspective.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Pillars of Society

By Henrik Ibsen, Adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher, directed by Hal Cropp
Commonweal Theatre (April 14, 2012)

Only a few weeks remain to see Commonweal’s Ibsen offering, Pillars of Society, the season’s best area offering of 2012 to date. (Pillars plays Thursday and Fridays through June 8).

Pillars of Society, one of Ibsen’s lesser performed plays, marks the beginning of Ibsen’s move from the melodrama that dominated theater of the 19th Century to the realism that marks the drama of the 20th Century. The play predates his ground breaking A Doll’s House, and can seem more clumsy and forced than the later plays. However, there is something about this production that gets beyond this clumsiness, bringing Ibsen’s exploration of the public and private lives to the center of the production. The success of the Commonweal production has a lot to do with Jeffery Hatcher’s adaptation of the script. In his third adaptation of Ibsen’s work for the Commonweal, Hatcher again demonstrates his ability to get to the heart of Ibsen’s story and the familial, economic, and political tensions that drive Ibsen’s work.

The public theme of the play centers around Karsten Bernick, the owner of a large ship-building company and a self-described leader or “pillar” of the community. Scott Dixon plays Bernick as a devout servant to his community-yes he has profited from the ship yards and his position in the community, but it is all for the greater good of society. Bernick feels he has sacrificed for the community and is deserving of the town’s accolades as well as certain perks that come with responsibility. It is a position that we see all too many corporate executives and politicians caught up in today: because of their perceived personal sacrifices and the overall benefit to society from their deals, trades, and vision, they don’t believe that have to follow the same rules as common people. So complete is their belief in their value to society, they view their excesses not as their just due but as part of their sacrifice on our behalf.


Scott Dixon, Stefanie Dickens Underferth, Catherine Glynn, Jeremy van Meter. Photo Jason Underferth.

While it is hard for Bernick to see the hypocrisy of his position, it is clear that it is his family that he has sacrificed. And perhaps this is the trademark of Ibsen’s modernism: the public persona of an individual must be looked at through the lens of the personal, even if that persona is clueless about the personal as Bernick seems to be in Pillars. As the play evolves, the list of people Bernick has sacrificed for his personal gain (and the betterment of society) continues to grow: spouse, sister, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, past mistress, workers at the ship yard. Yet Ibsen, and this production, don’t simply paint Bernick as the bad guy: he’s a recognizable human who is susceptible to the all-to-human expectations, foibles, and delusions that prevent a person from honestly seeing themselves.

While the story is the Norwegian ship magnet’s, Americans threaten the equilibrium and in many ways steal the show. Off stage, the American sailors in port scandalize the small coastal town. On stage, the arrival of Lona Hessel from her self-imposed exile in America shakes up the ordered Scandinavian household. The tall figure of Catherine Glynn, who makes her Commonweal debut as Lona, dressed in red, sweeps onto the stage, inflaming the past jealousy of her sister and the long buried passion of Karsten Bernick. Glynn plays this pivotal role brilliantly, not only making the Bernick family squirm with her lack of decorum and willingness to confront the truth, but she also causes a bit of discomfort among the Minnesota audience.

Ibsen uses America (the sailors and the returned family members) as a dramatic device to shake up both the town and the Norwegian family depicted in the play. It is also a great bonus for us as we get a glimpse of how Americans were stereotyped by Europeans at the turn of the 19th Century.

Commonweal’s Pillars of Society is a great play. It is full of humor, heartbreak, betrayal, and forgiveness. It’s many ideas and questions are relevant in our own public and private lives; I find myself thinking about the play frequently, many weeks after I saw the production. Unfortunately, we only have a few more weeks to enjoy this production.

Pillars of Society plays in repertory with The 39 Steps through June 8.
Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre (www.commonwealtheatre.org)