I’m the first one to take my seat in the auditorium, but I’m not alone. Hjalmar Ekdal (Kåre Conradi) is already sitting on the stage. In silk scarf and tailcoat (costumes by Silje Teland Pedersen), is he the hollow man in Ibsen’s bleak world? Are all the men hollow? The opening game of blind man’s bluff—he the one with his silk scarf covering his eyes—is a metaphor for the whole play, literal and symbolic blindness.
An empty theatre, an empty stage, bar some simple wooden chairs and wooden sliding panels at the back: it is Peter Brook’s empty space. All the better to concentrate on the words as the actors walk through their parts. Soundscape and lighting (Martin Flack) fill the emptiness of the soul. The Norwegian Ibsen Company’s version is spare, yet it comes in at three hours. Pace is measured, clarity is all.
Director Alan Lucien Øyen (also a choreographer) has done his own set and sound design—Wild Duck is his pared-down vision. Ibsen’s twelve named characters have been reduced to an essential eight. It is a chamber piece: watch and listen (or read the surtitles—translation by Tom Remlov) as Ibsen turns and tightens the screw.
Ibsen is said to be the most performed, next to Chekhov (keep in mind what he said about introducing a gun on the stage), playwright after Shakespeare, yet I’ve only seen Wild Duck twice in recent times—in 2004 and 2014. I missed the Almeida production in 2018.
Interestingly, Norway did not have a professional Ibsen Company until ten years ago when the above actor Conradi founded it. Ibsen’s moralizing play addressed to his fellow citizens spares no punches as he cranks up to a tragic dénouement. Lies and truth, can they coexist?
Hjalmar, the son of a lieutenant scapegoated and imprisoned for some illegal action, is a diffident figure and a bit of a child. Gregers, the disaffected son of the important man, Werle, who did so much damage to his mother and to Hjalmar’s father, Old Ekdal, thinks the truth will cleanse everybody, brush the past deceptions and pain away.
Like an angel of death, all in black, he wants Hjalmar to start afresh. Only in truth can he and his relationship with his family be reborn. He moves in with the poor family of four—Hjalmar, wife Gina, daughter Hedvig and father—living in a sparse attic, struggling to keep soul and spirit together.
The truth destroys them. Old Ekdal has a wildlife menagerie behind those sliding doors, where he shoots rabbits pretending they are the bears he once shot. The injured wild duck lives there. Shot by old Werle, rescued by one of his dogs, he has given it to Old Ekdal. Werle has also set up Hjalmar as a photographer and employs Old Ekdal as a copier… from philanthropy or a guilt conscience?
Gregers soon removes the scales from dreamer Hjamlar’s eyes. It’s like a thriller, obvious clues littered liberally. Hints at past transgressions. Old Werle is going blind (Svein Harry Hauge in thick bottle-bottom specs). Hedvig also has eyesight issues—is it hereditary? She loves reading. Gina worked for Werle—was his wife’s death suicide?
Gregers wants to set the world to rights. He chills the blood in his single-minded pursuit. Conscience does make fools of us all. How old is Hedvig? She’s big for her age... A simple soul, hoping for more food and treats on the table, she is susceptible to Gregers’s coaxing. Tomorrow is her birthday.
Her father loves her, but if she weren’t his… he falls apart. Creepy Gregers persuades Hedvig to sacrifice the wild duck for her father’s sake. But who is the wild duck, shot by Werle—he has shot them all with his rich man’s arrogance and entitlement. Werle deserves comeuppance, and yet he is going to marry his housekeeper, Mrs Sorby (Line Verndal), who has no secrets from him. Maybe at their age they can be honest, but in one’s youth…
Why do the innocent have to pay the price? Why do we kill the thing we love? The drunken doctor Relling (Joachim Rafaelson) has the final say: get rid of these idealists who come to our door. We all need “the life-lie”. Gregers, a bringer of misfortune, seems to get off on his “acute moral fever”.
The acting is naturalistic, quiet, undemonstrative, real. Hermine Svortevik Oen as Hedvig is outstanding. Yvonne Øyen’s Gina is the strong calm centre of the family. Bjørn Skagestad’s Old Ekdal and Svein Harry Hauge’s Werle could be interchangeable in different circumstances—Werle in his smart suit, Old Ekdal in his lieutenant’s uniform he can only wear in the house. Kåre Conradi inhabits Hjalmar totally and Christian Rubeck is an unsettling Gregers.
Compelling, yet the couple next to me leave in the interval. Too bleak perhaps for some, this five-act play from 1884, but it does need revisiting from time to time.