John Gabriel Borkman

The cold in John Gabriel Borkman is not merely atmospheric. Eight years after the former bank manager's release from prison, he remains frozen in his own house, haunting the upstairs room like a specter of the man he once was. His wife Gunhild tends a vigil of contempt in the ground floor parlor, keeping alive her hatred for the scoundrel who stole her dreams of grandeur. When Ella Rentheim, Gunhild's twin and former love of Borkman's youth, arrives to claim the son they both manipulate, the frozen hostilities begin to crack. Ibsen's penultimate play burrows into the wreckage of one man's ambition and asks what remains when the money is gone and the name is ruined. Borkman himself clings to a vision of former power, addressing unseen multitudes from his window, unable to accept that his life is over. The young Erhart stands at the intersection of these competing claims, and must finally choose which dead end to walk toward. This is theater as deep freeze: a family locked in ice, waiting for someone to melt or shatter.