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London's West End, theater's most hallowed ground, has of late been long on celebrity and short on serious theater. A parade of Hollywood stars with minimal acting chops have invaded Theaterland — among them Woody Harrelson and Kyle MacLachlan, but most notoriously Madonna in the execrable Up For Grabs — many of them sellout performances in every sense of the phrase. After Matthew Perry (one of the Friends) began filling the Comedy Theatre with his lightweight turn in David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago, you began to wonder if schlock is the only way to sell tickets these days.

Who'd have guessed that it would take a long-dead Norwegian playwright to save the West End? To the relief of lovers of serious theater, no fewer than four plays by Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) have opened in London this summer. Granted, the lead performers have some Hollywood movies on their CVs, but they also have serious theater cred — Ralph Fiennes, Natasha Richardson and Patrick Stewart know their way around the boards — and they're drawing rapturous reviews and full-house crowds. Industry-bible Variety magazine declared: "London stages a big comeback — a moribund theater climate has turned itself around." Stewart, best known as an X-Man and sometime Star Trekker, was last seen in the West End 17 years ago, but his performance in The Master Builder, Ibsen's claustrophobic study of obsession and paranoia, has won adulatory reviews. After the first preview at the Albery Theatre, the actor was plainly exhausted as he sipped champagne in his dressing room. "It's so draining," he exclaimed, in mock agony, "How can I do this for 10 weeks?"

Fiennes takes on an even tougher challenge at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, playing the puritanical priest of Brand. "You have to rehearse and play Ibsen at a high temperature or the cake won't rise," says its director, Adrian Noble. "That's an extraordinary strain and amazing challenge for an actor like Ralph." And the ethereal Richardson, Tony Award-winner and daughter of Vanessa Redgrave, essays another marathon role in The Lady from the Sea at the Almeida. (The fourth Ibsen play, Ingmar Bergman's production of Ghosts, had a brief London run at the Barbican in May.) None of these plays is easy for performer or audience, especially the rarely done Brand and The Lady From the Sea. But their success doesn't surprise the Almeida's artistic director, Michael Attenborough. "People have an image of Ibsen as elderly, stern and white- whiskered," he says, "But he was mischievous, always pushing political and theatrical boundaries. That's why his characters still challenge us."

Ibsen's characters are usually required to make difficult choices, a theme Attenborough says mirrors society's struggle between its anarchic and restrictive instincts. Lady's Ellida must choose between her staid husband and a wild, mysterious sailor, and Richardson makes the role a journey into madness and back. The Master Builder must choose between a dangerous, young temptress and a safe descent into old age, and Stewart reaches tremulously into the character's insecurities. And Brand's eponymous preacher must choose to sacrifice everything, even wife and child, for his God, giving Fiennes an opportunity to examine cold, superficially rational religious extremism.

For Noble, Ibsen's characters, conceived in the 19th century, are eerily modern. "Brand is about fundamentalism, about people who believe that life on Earth is not of ultimate value," he says. "Reading about suicide bombings in Israel, that speaks to me." Stewart, whose sexagenarian Master Builder lusts for a teenage girl, reports that, during a tour of some of the more prudish British towns, audience members walked out in protest. "It felt as shocking as it was in the 1890s. I rather enjoyed that!"

Will the success of the Ibsen plays prompt the West End to put on more serious work? Duncan Weldon, producer of The Master Builder, is pessimistic. "We are seeing, if not the last hurrah of serious plays, at least the signs of a slowdown. Other forms of entertainment will take over and in 10 years there will be far less theater." Theatergoers hope that dark prediction never comes true. But just in case, they should make the most of this glorious Ibsen summer.

• JAMES INVERNE
• London's West End is enjoying a sudden Norwegian feast