John Gabriel Borkman
HE ABBEY Theatre’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s (BAM) Harvey Theatre on Wednesday before a packed audience that included luminaries of the Irish cultural and diplomatic world and American sponsors of the arts.
The production, which features Fiona Shaw, Alan Rickman, Lindsay Duncan and John Kavanagh, broke box office records during its seven-week run in Dublin last autumn, said Abbey director Fiach Mac Conghail, who travelled to New York for the US opening.
The production will continue in Brooklyn until February 6th. Two-thirds of the tickets for the run had been sold before opening night.
Former US ambassador to Ireland Jean Kennedy Smith, a fan of the Abbey since her years in Dublin, called the performance “really beautiful” and “so well-acted”. Anne Anderson, Ireland’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and writer Colum McCann also attended.
At the opening night party in the theatre, Irish-American philanthropist and chair of the American Ireland Fund Loretta Brennan Glucksman, chief executive of Culture Ireland Eugene Downes and McCann reminisced about the series of informal suppers that led to the Imagine Ireland cultural season, of which the Abbey production is an important part. Niall Burgess, former Irish consul general in New York, and actor Gabriel Byrne, Ireland’s cultural ambassador, also attended the suppers.