THE WILD DUCK
Almeida Theatre. Until 1 December. Tickets: 020 7359 4404
BACK in the 1970s I was lucky enough to see Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s stage production of The Wild Duck starring Max von Sydow. So it was with some trepidation that I approached Robert Icke’s new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s rarely performed play.
When Gregory Woods (Kevin Harvey), the prodigal son of wealthy industrialist Charles Woods (Nicholas Day), enters clutching a microphone and launches into a Chorus-like explanation of the events we are about to witness, my heart sinks.
He throws in questions about truth as well as uncomfortable facts about Ibsen’s illicit love life. So far, so meta-theatre.
But as the narrative takes hold, it is clear that we are being lured into a domestic drama of magnificent complexity.
It is set largely in the house and photographic studio of Gregory’s old school friend James Ekdal (Edward Hogg). He lives with his wife Gina (Lyndsey Marshal), young daughter Hedwig (Clara Read, alternating with Grace Doherty) and James’s father Francis (Nicholas Farrell). But beneath the forced domestic gaiety they are living hand-to-mouth.
James is a neurotic dreamer whose over-bright demeanour hides seething resentment. Gina handles the family finances and Hedwig keeps a DIY forest in the attic complete with rabbits and a wild duck, rescued after being wounded by Francis.
During a 15-year absence, sanctimonious Gregory seems to have undergone some kind of conversion into an archaeologist of truth.
As he excavates the secrets of the past, the family begins to unravel. This is a house the closets of which contain more skeletons than clothes.
Gregory’s brutal father is the missing link between Gina, whose past association with him throws up distressing secrets, Hedwig’s early onset macular
degeneration and old Ekdal’s secret pension. And Ibsen questions whether it is better to live a contented life based on lies rather than risk exposing truths that might prove catastrophic.
The cast is superb, particularly Farrell’s Ekdal, hiding his bottles of booze like a guilty child, and his story of the rescue of the wounded duck is mesmerising.
Writer/director Icke delivers a contemporary adaptation that is neither anachronistic nor self-consciously modern. And when the attic is finally revealed in a stunning coup-de-théâtre, it is the prelude to a tragedy that is as shocking as it is inevitable.
Nothing could equal Bergman’s traditional production. But this can stand alongside it with its head held high.