Judgement Day
From: Wednesday, 16th November 2011
To: Saturday, 17 December 2011
Our Review: 
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Synopsis
A new version of Ibsen's When We Dead Awaken. Written and first performed in 1899, When We Dead Awaken is one of Ibsen s most extraordinary and deeply personal works, last shown in London in 1994. Set within a mythical Nordic landscape Judgement Day offers an explicit and merciless self-portrait of Ibsen as an aging artist: restless with his art, his homeland and his married life. Its central character, the sculptor Rubek, exhibits all the extraordinary passion and fantastical drive that was an essential part of Ibsen s own creative character. Whilst holidaying with his young wife, Rubek encounters his muse: a woman that he loved and left a lifetime ago. What follows is a heartfelt examination of how Rubek has used these two. Over a series of heated encounters, the entire scroll of Rubek s life is unrolled in Ibsen s final - and most autobiographical - exploration of what it means to love and to be loved. A study in the destructive power of the creative impulse, Judgement Day examines some of the strangest and most mysterious areas of human behaviour.
Our Review:
Michael Coveney - 22 November 2011
The first title of Ibsen’s last play was "Resurrection Day", but who would want to mess with the eerily evocative When We Dead Awaken, as it’s usually known in English? Translator Mike Poulton and director James Dacre, that’s who, for some reason.
But Judgement Day is already the title of a play by Odon von Horvath, seen twice on the fringe (at the Old Red Lion and the Almeida), and Poulton’s “new version” of When We Dead Awaken - no credit for the literal translation, and who the hell’s that speechless nun who keeps putting her mug in the doorway? - seems skinny and slight.
That said, Michael Pennington as the desiccated old sculptor, Rubek, and Penny Downie as his ghost-like muse and model, Irena de Satoff, play out their half-dead, half-alive mountainside reunion with a compelling mixture of charm, poignancy and bitterness.
Mike Britton’s design of neutral plasti...
Creative
Mike Poulton (Author)
The Print Room (Producer)
James Dacre (Director)
Mike Britton (Design)
Richard Hammerton (Music)
Richard Hammerton (Sound)
Anji Carroll CDG (casting) (Director)
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