On Top

Of all the writers who are clearly major league Ibsen has always seemed to me the most in and out in terms of the form book. So it wasn't any great surprise the other day when I settled to a reading of The Master Builder to discover that it was utter tosh. I suppose it might just work on stage with sympathetic performances, and I can see (or hear) a place for it on radio in a particularly barren season, but I'm puzzled as to how anyone can be seriously expected to sit through an evening of the old fellow's concerns about achieving massive erections. (No, the gag is never voiced in the course of the drama, but you don't need to be the good Doctor Freud to know that that's what it's all about.)