Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Norwegian Wood


Today comes the news that Malvolio Claxendell is collaborating with Yevgeny Huxtable by writing the libretto for his colleague's opera based on Ibsen's newly discovered comedy 'The Wild Enemy of Count Arthur Strong, Masterbuilder'. The musical extravaganza promoted by the Director of Global Brickworks, Lucien Jung, is expected to be the centrepiece of this year's Seven Dials Festival. Ibsen wrote the play when his wife, Suzannah Thoresen,  suffered exogenous depression after losing twenty kroner at Valhalla Bingo. To cheer her up he then performed the piece with a specially constructed puppet theatre. In the 1960s Ingmar Bergman adapted it for the big screen, turning it into a searing existential tragedy on the theme of death, misdirected metempsychosis and eternal virginity.

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