Only the setting, by Karl Kneidl, suggested the usual German freedom from the traditions of conventional staging.  The first and third acts were set, as Ibsen requested, in the Rosmer living room, full of floral arrangements but without a portrait in sight.  The left of the stage offered the most complete evocation of a conventional room, with a bay window and window seat set into a high white wall topped by a heavy cornice.  The rear wall of the stage was a huge green drop with no pictures, no cornice, and a single door in its center opening onto a painted, tree-lined path.  A large free-standing staircase, without railings, led up and off right. Behind it, where the green flat ended, one could dimly see the fly gallery and side walls of the backstage area.  Downstage of the stairs was a sofa, and at stage center were a small table and chairs.
          The second-act setting, Rosmer’s study, was indicated by a long beige backdrop far downstage, creating a very shallow acting area, with an entry door at one end, the door to the bedroom at the other, and a table, chair and trunk between them.  Most surprising was the last act, set not as Ibsen indicated, back in the living room, but in a wooded area behind the house.  The stairway to the right, now covered with dark canvas, suggested a small hill or embankment.  On the other side of the stage was an abandoned, stripped-down convertible automobile, lacking wheels and a top.  Between them, upstage center, was a large metal shed, where Rosmer put the bicycle he used to ride onstage for this act.  Behind all of this was a thick growth of trees and bushes.  Despite these unusual visual touches, the emphasis of the production remained always on the actors, who amply fulfilled the expectations of their public.  Angela Winkler was simply stunning as Rebecca West.  Her incredibly expressive voice and body suggested every shade of emotion in this mercurial character.  Her casual firting with Kroll, which he at first encouraged, then rejected, and the suble variations of her physical relationship to Rosmer, often based upon a carefully controlled tension between attraction and repulsion, moving close to him, almost touching and then pulling back, were models of ambiguity.  Her rejection of Rosmer’s proposal at the end of the second act, one of the play’s most powerful and difficult moments, was astonishing in its imagination and power.  Twice Winkler cried out and tried to dash into Voss’s arms, only to stop abruptly, as if entering a reversed magnetic field.
            

           Voss was in every way Winkler’s equal, the most fascinating, troubled, and convincing Rosmer have ever seen, quiet but intense in the opening scenes, passionate in his appeals to Kroll, bewildered by the stunning revelations of the second act (he is not afraid to take extremely long pauses to allow Kroll’s words to sink in), and then dangerously physical as he attacks Rebecca in the third act, forcing Kroll to seize and restrain him and Rebecca to shrink from him in terror.  Winkler, by the way, utilized the memory of this anger in the final act, approaching the physically dominant Voss only very carefully and tentatively.  I never before realized that what is most often lacking in interpretations of Rosmer is any real sense of strength in him.  I must also note what a pleasure it is to hear actors who can range from the most violent physical outbursts to the quietest of whispers and still be easily heard.

       Moving the final act out of doors provides no lessening of the tragic tension.  Indeed, as in John Gabriel Borkman, it seems to give the play a larger dimension.  But Zadek provided an interesting technique for concentration.  Normally in his productions, le leaves the houselights half on, and he does so here for the first three acts, but then takes them down for this final act, adding markedly to the impression of concentration and impending doom.  The powerful tragicomic note struck by Brendel in this act is excellently captured by the talented Otto Schenk, who recalls his decades as a physical comedian by entering the scene literally falling “downhill” from the embankment on our right and sprawling at its foot to raise a suppliant hand to Rosmer to beg an ideal or two.  He then climbs into the abandoned auto to parody the triumphant Mortensgaard waving to imaginary crowds from the back seat and then, emerging, knocks the car’s broken side door to the ground.  The marriage vow, with Voss laying on Winkler’s head his hand, which she clasps in both of hers as she leans upon his breast, is powerfully moving, as is her gentle pulling of the white shawl over both their heads before they leave together for their deaths.