JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN

About the show

Ibsen's late work, "John Gabriel Borkman," is a masterpiece of analytical drama. The banker John Gabriel Borkman, sentenced to five years in prison for embezzling funds, voluntarily prolongs his sentence after his release: for eight years he has refused to leave the grand hall on the upper floor of his house. He is not prevented from doing so; his wife lives in dread with him and plots revenge one floor below. This house of death is disturbingly disrupted by the visit of her twin sister, Borkman's former lover and the foster mother of his son, who, due to her serious illness, wishes to resolve the irreconcilable family situation. Yet none of those involved, especially Borkman himself, have experienced any form of purification, awareness of wrongdoing, or self-awareness since the financial scandal, because "that is the curse we exceptional, we chosen people have to bear. The masses and the crowd—all the average people—they simply don't understand us." Borkman presents his economic and ethical excesses as a service to the public and legitimizes his unscrupulousness through altruistic motives and philanthropic ideas. Young Borkman is meant to restore the family's reputation – but even this hope dies, albeit last. Against the backdrop of the global financial disaster, the promises of liberalism, the law of competition, and Ibsen's depiction of the expansive mechanisms of capitalism have become more relevant than ever.