Henrik Ibsen must be sick and tired of having his plays ’reimagined’ by lesser playwrights. Given that he was ahead of the game in dealing with gender issues, women’s rights and abusive patriarchy, it seems unnecessary to alter anything aside from upgrading the English translations. But that doesn’t stop all and sundry having a bash at dismantling the text and reforging it in ways that flatten out the original concepts.
Writer/director Simon Stone’s schtick is to take classic plays and reformulate them to speak to contemporary audiences and he is a good enough writer to get away with it from time to time. His adaptation of Phaedra with Janet McTeer was a vast improvement on his wretched Billie Piper-led Yerma and his latest effort falls somewhere between the two.
At least he keeps to the arc of the story, more or less, and some of his interventions are engaging but it is a long way from flawless.
The big pull here is the casting of Oscar winning Swedish actress Alicia Vikander making her stage debut and The Walking Dead’s Andrew Lincoln as husband and second wife Edward and Ellida. The setup is relatively simple. Five years into their marriage, neurosurgeon Edward is still secretly mourning his first wife (who committed suicide) while mishandling his two smart mouthed teenage daughters who are antsy about living with stepmum and Edward’s passive-aggressive control.
When Ellida’s enigmatic past rises to throw a spanner into already misfiring works in the shape of a former lover/mentor and eco warrior Finn (Brendan Cowell), with whom she had a profound affair at 15, the fragile marital structure disintegrates. Played in the round on a raised stage with minimal white furnishings that symbolically change to black in the second half, it begins with the accelerated family banter at which Stone is adept, as the daughters Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike) and Asa (Gracie Oddie-James) harass Dad and New Mum without mercy.
Edward’s terminally ill patient, Heath (Joe Alwyn) and Edward’s best pal Lyle (John Macmillanl) are basically spectators brought in to lighten the mood and provide light relief when things get too heavy. And heavy they get with the arrival of Finn, a burly, menacing presence who claims Ellida as his own after having spent 15 years in prison for a murder for which he took the blame.
Stone’s staging in the second half features almost continuous rainfall and has the cast splashing about in a pool of water, culminating in a divided scene in which Edward and Heath become progressively animated while Finn and Ellida are carnally engaged in the water beside them like Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr in From Here to Eternity.
Vikander shifts effortlessly from surface playfulness to angst ridden femme irrésolu as her guilty past devours her from the inside like a psychological form of necrotising fasciitis. A naiad-like mystery clings to her but the script denies her the chance to convey her layered enigma which is a pity as she is the only one on stage who has a discernible connection with Ibsen’s mythical symbolism. Lincoln is on safer ground as Edward’s hapless decency curdles into impotent rage, mitigated only by the cool and funny interventions from Lyle.
The performances are terrific but Stone’s script wanders off piste in the second half, as the daughters steal focus from the central dilemma. References to Instagram, OnlyFans, etc rob the play of the metaphysical/mythical dimension of the original, sacrificing Ibsen’s haunting mystery for earthbound modern drama. A frustrating night.
THE LADY FROM THE SEA AT THE BRIDGE THEATRE TO NOVEMBER 8