Last night, I saw Theatre for a New Audience's production of Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck. If you haven't seen it yet, the show is definitely worth checking out before it closes on Sunday.
Pettersen, the old hand at the Werle mansion, is the character who introduces us to the action, and is usually played by a man. In this production, directed by Simon Godwin, the role is played by Katie Broad as one of the maids in the household, which makes perfect sense.
In the original play, the hired waiter Jensen appears to be there just to get Pettersen talking, so it would normally be thrown away on a performer like Alexander Sovronsky, who has composed music for a host of shows, including the excellent Mother of the Maid. Fortunately, Sovronsky sticks around for the rest of the show, periodically providing live violin music as the action advances.
After the first act melts away, the posh Werle home is replaced by the humbler abode of the Ekdal family, nominally headed by Hjalmer (Nick Westrate). The household is really run, though, by his wife Gina (Melanie Field) and teenage daughter Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn). Hjalmer instead spends his time in a fantasy-land upstairs in the loft where he and his father (David Patrick Kelly) keep a number of animals, including the titular wild duck.
To call the duck a metaphor is insufficient, since much of the action of the play hinges on Mr. Werle's estranged son Gregers (Alexander Hurt) speaking about the duck metaphorically. Hedvig, who loves the duck more than anything else, catches on to the notion that the duck might be a metaphor, taking the idea even further than Gregers intends. This, as they say, has consequences.
If the world of the loft is a sort of fantasy heaven, the downstairs apartment could be a hell. It is occupied by the cynical Dr. Relling, played by Matthew Saldivar who memorably portrayed Alphonse Mucha in Bernhardt/Hamlet. Relling's roommate, the demonic Molvik, never appears in this adaptation of the play penned by David Eldridge.
Toward the end of the play last night, the actors skipped right over one of the greatest lines in the piece, though I'm not sure if that was Eldridge's doing or an actor's flub. In any case, it was the only false note in what was otherwise a splendid production.
