Nordic noir will make you pine for the fjords

FORMER artistic director of the National Theatre, Sir Richard Eyre, is immersing himself in Ibsen during his autumn years.

In 2013, he wrote and directed his own version of Ibsen’s Ghosts — a dark tale of homecoming starring Lesley Manville.

Now we have his take on the whiskery Norwegian’s 1894 study of the effect of grief on an unhappily married couple in Norway’s distant fjords.

The death of their only child Eyolf both binds and sunders the acrimonious marriage. The husband is a tortured great man who is writing a mighty book on human responsibility (Ibsen, thinly disguised).

His restless wife, meanwhile, is desperate for attention, feeling shut out by her husband’s work, and by having to play second fiddle to his sister, for whom he holds an incestuous candle.

Leading man Jolyon Coy is perhaps too gentle an actor to speak of ‘wallowing in the peace and luxury of death’ or of his ‘duty to be cruel’, but Lydia Leonard as his wife burns with sexual and emotional fury.

It’s certainly not light entertainment, but if you like Nordic angst in lovely costumes with ethereal interior design, this could be for you.