IBSEN HUIS

About the show

In Ibsen House, Stone combines elements from the less well-known plays by Ibsen and rewrites them into something completely new. The starting point is the house built by the visionary architect Solness out of love for the much younger Hilda Wangel. Houses play a large part in the work of Ibsen. They are the place where relationships become clear: the complex relations between men and women, the difficult bond between parents and children. There is a reason why little Eyolf lives in a large house near the lake with his parents. The drama about Nora and her husband Torvald is not called A doll’s house for nothing. At the centre of the play, there is the holiday home designed by renowned architect Cees Kerkman, where the various family members meet each other at crucial moments in their lives. We watch the family from 1964, when the house is being built, until 2016, when it finally goes up in flames. As is traditional with Ibsen, there are quite a few secrets and traumas that have a fatal influence on the lives of the different generations. An intriguing game of repression, lies and reckonings emerges, with the house as the only witness to the entire family tragedy.