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Title: Realism
Review: So much in reading Ibsen depends upon the translation of these great works. These four plays of Ibsen's so-called "realistic period" revolve around social issues of his day which plague us 100 years later. Do we ever learn from such literary wake-up calls? Although the dramatic tensions here, which could have easily have been 20th Century tensions, rumble through these plays, the translations here are wordy and dated, thus making the plays sound overly melodramatic and at times downright silly. Still, everyone should read -- and discuss -- Ibsen's plays for their uneasy questions regarding universal social problems: money, privacy, freedom to act, government corruption, unchecked journalism, and the moral and physical diseases which only seem to wear a new face each year.
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