‘Erik’ tackles tough tech issues
Adaptation of Ibsen play a flawed look at a marriage after tragedy
The death of a marriage sets off seismic aftershocks in “Little Erik.”
Mark Jackson’s strangely compelling if wildly uneven adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s 1894 work “Little Eyolf” plumbs such mysteries as why parenting sucks the life out of romance and how technology drives evolution. But that is just the start of the turmoil in this taut but flawed 80-minute drama. Directed by Jackson, it runs through Feb. 28 in its world premiere at Berkeley’s Aurora Theatre.
Jackson, always a theatrical adventurer, from “The Death of Meyerhold” to “Now for Now,” smacks all the cobwebs out of Ibsen’s text with a vividly contemporary take on the fractured family drama. One of Ibsen’s lesser-known works, the drama trafficks in taboos that still are unsettling. Alas, the play falters in the ways it stitches the suppressed angst of the past together with the wired spirit of the present.
Meet Joie (a steely Marilee Talkington), a tech hotshot with a personality as hard as her iPhone. She supports her wannabe writer husband, Freddie (Joe Estlack), a Luddite dreamer who has been globe-trotting for six months, ostensibly to write a novel about human responsibility. Their son Erik (Jack Wittmayer) yearns to be a swimmer and a rap star when he’s not worrying about how all the kids make fun of him.
Once reunited, Joie and Freddie must confront the fissures in their marriage and what guilt they should bear for their son’s disability. He slipped and injured his spine while they were having makeup sex. So feeble are they at parenting that they relied upon Freddie’s gentle-hearted sister Andi (Mariah Castle) to nurse the boy back to health.
Lust is the only thing that held them together, so once that goes, there’s nothing left but appearances and resentment. Joie is jealous of the fondness Freddie has for their son. Freddie is envious of the passion Joie feels for high tech. While they are bickering during a getaway at their swanky new cabin in the mountains (starkly modern set design by Nina Ball), the boy wanders off — and tragedy ensues.
Jackson’s adaptation astutely sharpens the edge of the play, particularly its bleak view of marriage, but the characters never really ring true. There’s little sexual chemistry between Joie and Freddie and even less genuine warmth. The figure of the Rat Wife, a mysterious woman who seems to be more than just someone who works ridding homes of rodents, is never fully developed, although Wilma Bonet gives her a sense of dark magic.
There’s also very little fallout in the wake of Erik’s disappearance. At a time when any parent or aunt would be reduced to sobbing gibberish, these characters engage in flower picking and existential debate. As a meditation on tragedy and loss, the narrative sputters. The exploration of other explosive themes (best left unmentioned here) also comes up short.
By far the most heat is generated by the exploration of tech and how it might be shaping human history. From the obsolescence of memory in the age of Google to the mandatory nature of bonding with your smartphone more than your child, the play distills the zeitgeist of the now with devastating clarity.
Jackson’s insights into the tech aesthetic far eclipse the depth of the tragedies facing his characters, which leads to an unsatisfying narrative. The abrupt ending, with its apocalyptic overtones, feels tacked on.
Still, there is no denying that you walk away from the theater wrestling with the issues that shape all of our lives.