The League of Youth

The League of Youth (Norwegian: De unges Forbund) is a play by Henrik Ibsen finished in early May 1869. It was Ibsen's first play in colloquial prose and marks a turning point in his style towards realism and away from verse. It was widely considered Ibsen's most popular play in nineteenth-century Norway. Though rooted in serious events of the time, the play was lauded for its natural and witty dialogue, cynical humour and farcical intrigue.

Taking a different tack than Ibsen's earlier political play The Pretenders, The League of Youth features a protagonist Stensgaard, who poses as a political idealist and gathers a new party around him, the 'League of Youth', and aims to eliminate corruption among the "old" guard and bring his new "young" group to power. In scheming to be elected, he immerses himself in social and sexual intrigue, culminating in such complexity that at the end of the play all the women whom he has at one time planned to marry reject him, his plans for election fail, and he is run out of town.

The initial evenings stage production saw loud applause and glowing reviews by critics in the papers. However, by the second performance, both Conservatives and Liberals were saying it was an attack on their party. When both sides showed up for the second performance, a loud ruckus forced the manager to plead for calm and there were continual interruptions. At the plays end, the gas lights were turned off to force the unruly mob out of the theater with fighting continuing into the streets.

Though popular and often produced in Scandinavia it has rarely been staged elsewhere. There have been three known productions in the UK: on a Sunday evening in 1900 a single performance by the Stage Society with Granville Barker as Erik, Robert Farquharson as Bastian and Edward Knoblock as a waiter. The first ever professional production of the play, in a version by Andy Barrett (published by Nick Hern Books), premiered on 13 May 2011 at Nottingham Playhouse. In 2016 London based theatre company Riot Act produced a critically acclaimed modern adaption (by playwright Ashley Pearson) in collaboration with Theatre N16 in South London. The production gave the play a New Order-scored aggressive resuscitation which mirrored modern UK politics and was directed by Whit Hertford In the United States, an ebullient and brilliant professional production (adaptation by Jeffrey Hatcher) was produced at The Commonweal Theatre [1] in Lanesboro, Minnesota in 2016.

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