JOHN GABRIEL BORKMAN by Henrik Ibsen
This play may carry a jinx. Each the infrequent attempts to stage it in the U.S. in the past quarter-century has proved monumentally inert, and the present production at Broadway's Circle in the Square is no exception. Borkman is a wintry drama, a sort of autopsy blanched ruined lives.
The hero, played by E.G. Marshall, was once the head of a great bank. He embezzled funds in a desperate move to protect his depositors, was caught out and spent five years in prison. For the past eight years he has paced an upper room in his bleak...