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These giants would be the playwright Henrik Ibsen, he of A Doll House and Hedda Gabler and other stage classics too numerous to list here, and the sculptor Gustav Vigeland, who's acclaimed today for works as varied as a dizzyingly vast statue installation in Oslo's Frogner Park and the design of the Nobel Peace Prize. As Wright has it, the two men were absolutists concerned not just with their individual output in the moment, but the scope of the legacy they'd leave behind for the generations to come. So when their paths cross in Vigeland's studio (which has been smartly, and suffocatingly, designed by Derek McLand) in 1901, the result is not an instant friendship—or, for that matter, a friendship at all. Vigeland (Hamish Linklater), at that point still on the rise, is at the end of his financial rope, and still searching for the respect and the authority he needs to make his installation happen. Ibsen (John Noble) already has all that, as well as an illustrious career behind him, and wants to make sure history remembers him as he sees himself; he's already rejected a number of other sculptors he's deemed unworthy. The day they meet in Vigeland's studio, it's clear they're not speaking the same language. Vigeland's idea of research is reading everything he can about Ibsen's plays, but not reading the plays themselves. Ibsen takes this an affront, and taunts Vigeland's relying on others' commentary, even though he has an oddly encyclopedic knowledge of his own good reviews. (He even carries around one with him: a piece written by a young student named James Joyce.) And the flames that erupt as the desperate Vigeland tries to convince the obstinate Ibsen of his worthiness are more than enough to fuel a kiln for a week, and propel the two to a kind of respect that may still peel paint, but allows the opposing forces to meet on some field of dually acknowledged greatness. The scene in which their meeting occurs, the last in the first act, works beautifully because of Wright's devotion to fair play. Noble is outstanding, having infused Ibsen with a self-generating gravitas that gives him the stature, weight, and intimidating look and sound of a true legend in his own time. But Linklater's Vigeland is a compelling foil. He's brash and needy, yes, but with the nimbleness of someone with nothing to lose, and an intense focus on what he believes is right. You utterly believe the only thing you must: that these two men are the lords of their own universes, and unwilling to accept any tribute to their omnipotence that is less than total. In the second act, Wright extends the plot and continues the theme, but the way in which he dwells on matters of responsibility—how one balances between what the subject wants, what the creator wants, and what the public wants—borders on maudlin and familiar in a way the more caustic scenes between intermission don't. Noble and Linklater remain at the top of their game, establishing gorgeously nuanced depictions of how Ibsen and Vigeland view all this, but the resolution Wright has devised is more of a love letter to the creative spirit than a cutting explication of it, and if it's all carefully, beautifully written, it saps the play of much of its earlier, engrossing urgency. Still, Wright, as both writer and director, thoroughly explores his possibilities, investigating how these men's struggles are shared (or not) by the outside world. His three other characters are grappling with similar issues, from their own more limited perspectives: Sophus Larpent (Henry Stram) is an art maven whose main accomplishment is bringing artists and patrons together, a vital if not lasting contribution; Anfinn (Mickey Theis) is a young sculptor who's biding or perhaps squandering his time and talent working as Vigeland's model and errand boy; and Greta (Dale Soules) is a cleaning woman who's afraid no trace of her and her family will be left behind when she dies, and wants only, somehow, to be remembered. To some degree, Greta's desire is one we all share, and what Wright's versions of Vigeland and Noble have based their careers on. What's more, they know it and they use it, and that may be their most dangerous quality. At its best, Posterity sharply illuminates this mindset without excusing it, pulling back the veil of genius just far enough for us to understand both why it drives the rest of us mad and why we need it to give us the grasp at eternity most of us will likely never reach ourselves.
Posterity
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