Words from Ian McKellen
This production was cross-cast with “Twelfth Night” and was rehearsed simultaneously. Perhaps that’s why I was never totally familiar with Hjalmar Ekdal’s lines, at least in the fourth act where Corin Redgrave (Gregers Werle) helped me through at the first performance. The old-fashioned translation was stilted but I relished Ibsen’s comedy and the melodrama. — Ian McKellen, December 2006