Christian Rubeck (foreground). Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.
Simon Jenner, October 23rd 2024
When do facts become illusion, when does the truth kill, and “life-lies” keep you living? Ibsen turns the truth-telling of his previous An Enemy of the People on its head. Despite Ibsen’s 1884 The Wild Duck being regarded as his finest play (along with the succeeding Rosmerholm) it shares with it comparative neglect in the UK.
The Norwegian Ibsen Company has again collaborated with the Coronet Theatre in a production directed by Alan Lucien Øyen for its third Ibsen production; and its finest. It’s a short run ending November 2nd, worth dropping everything to see.
This is a landmark production even by these collaborators’ standards. Not simply for its Norwegian, which we’ve seen before: but for producing a full text and not a hybrid as in The Lady From the Sea (2019), and an easier realisation than the elusive When We Dead Awaken (2022). The actors now seem liberated: the pace is often ferocious and a large contingent of Norwegians in the audience laugh at being literally in on jokes many of us just register. This is Ibsen as we’ve never seen. Idiomatic, unbuttoned, uncompromising, funny, horrible.
Hermine Svortevik Oen and Bjørn Skagestad. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton.
Though close attention to the fleeting surtitles is essential in Tom Remlov’s translation, this production offers a fleeter, fuller and over three hours engrossingly headlong immersion into the slow nightmare of competing devils.
The feel is of a piece. Alan Lucien Øyen’s direction extends to his sparse Larssen-like set of stripped wood flooring; a few chairs and props are all that’s needed. Øyen’s sound design involves the use of an attractive minimalist piano theme ratcheting up tension (do we need it?), inevitable cracks and final bang. Martin Flack’s lighting steps in and out of days, and like Silje Teland Pedersen’s dark non-specific costumes planes a flat, undistracting interior. Everything turns on acting, gesture, velocity of words and emotions. Suggestively we start with a game of Blind Man’s Buff.
In Ibsen’s slightly odd construction, a prologue-like first scene takes place in a different location from the rest of the paly. We’re at the home of the instigator of the tragedy, or even tragi-comedy as it’s called.
Hakon Werle (avuncular but faintly menacing Svein Harry Hauge) is confronted by his long-absent son Gregers Werle (Christian Rubeck, lean hungry and narrowly young),who turned away from his prosperous and – as she deems corrupt – father: he’s on a mission to mine truth and make a fire with it. Revolution is revelation, and it starts with the Ekdal family.
Yvonne Øyen, Kåre Conradi and Hermine Svortevik Oen. Photo credit: Tristram Kenton
Is there purity in the son’s motive for the father lavishing support covertly on the hapless son of a man he once ruined and let take the rap? The son doesn’t want the money, but seems sore anyone else receives it.
Christian Rubeck Photography Tristram Kenton
The Wild Duck was last revived in London in the curious 2018 Almeida production. Though it might seem challenging, the pared-down theatricaltity means we’re exposed to the jangling f family nerves and buried secrets.
Hjalmar Ekdal (Kåre Conradi in a fine bewildering bonhomie gradually sheered off into man-child reactiveness) is essentially a weak man. He’s a photographer with a studio and guest-house run by his wife Gina Ekdal (Yvonne Øyen, warm, watchful, appalled and here pulsing with premonition), former housekeeper to Hakon Wele. She married Hjalmar and soon bore their daughter, Hedwig (Hermine Svortevik Oen).
But like Hakon as we finally learn, Hedwig is gong slowly blind, though obviously at nearly 14 at a far younger age. Svortevik Oen gives an appealing still performance, everything contained in burst of joy and like Øyen, watchfulness and anxiety. Nothing prepares us for her explosive breakdown, the most remarkable of a young Ibsen lead I’ve seen.
This realist play is shot through with blind sight (photography) truth or sight revealed disastrously to one going blind who wants nothing more than to use her eyes as an engraver.
Even here there’s more illusion. The doctor Relling (Joachim Rafaelsen, edgy, permanently dishevelled, even slightly pauper-ish),is Gregers’ opponent, even sparring-partner. They seem sometimes ready to put down wagers. Seen by some as cynical, furious that skeletons and cupboards have to dance, he’s also persuaded Hjalmar to believe in a new photographic invention to keep him occupied. It’s he who propagates the importance of “life-lies” and who’s furious Hakon’s bacillus is being spread by his son, for whatever reason.
Joachim Rafaelson Photography Tristram Kenton
The cast is completed by Old Ekdal (Bjørn Skagestad, shambling beautifully out of sense), a man ruined by Hakon to the point of imprisonment but guiltily supported through donations to his family and by a new grant that sends the family reeling. The wild duck of the title is a Hakon-winged creature nurse back to health and kept in a loft where with dad Christmas trees and live rabbits old Ekdal can revive his memories of being a great huntsman.
Mrs Sorby (Line Verndal, in a burst of sunlight mainly directed at Gina) arrives with further news about Hakon. By this time Hjalmar is alienated, Gregers now works on the paternally-rejected Hedwig, after a litany of “God forgive you” from Gina, and the tragedy draws threads we see echoed in later works.
There’s a wealth of social detail normally excised and sleeked from Ibsen. This company’s inhabiting his work makes their realisation of it effortless, and with a full, patient but always compellingly-paced production. Conradi, Øyen, Oen and Rubeck compel in sovereign performances, and the supporting cast are as fine.
This production carries one truth that refreshes: strip all the directors’ concepts and editing, and for once truth will set Ibsen, and ourselves as free as it imprisons its characters. Outstanding.
Hermine Svortevik Oen , Bjorn Skagestad Photography Tristram Kenton
Written by Henrik Ibsen, Direction, Set Design & Sound Design by Alan Lucien Øyen
Costume Design by Silje Teland Pedersen Lighting Design by Martin Flack, Dramaturg and English Translation Tom Remlov, CSM Grethe Henden, DSM Sandra Tyrhaug
Cast
Kåre Conradi, Svein Harry Hauge, Hermine Svortevik Oen, Yvonne Øyen, Joachim Rafaelsen, Christian Rubeck, Bjørn Skagestad and Line Verndal
With the Support of
The Norwegian Embassy, Det Norske Teatret, With Thanks to Riksteatret
Line Verndal, Yvonne Øyen. Photography Tristram Kenton