The Wild Duck is a fascinating play and considered among Henrik Ibsen’s finest, yet his 1884 tragicomedy is staged scarcely as often as other major works such as A Doll’s House. The last time the play landed on Broadway was 1967. Opening on Sunday, Theatre for a New Audience’s production suggests why The Wild Duck is a rare bird these days: Even by Ibsen’s standards for sorrow, it’s a nasty story.
Set in Norway in the 1880s, the drama centers on the Ekdals, a cozy middle-class family. Hjalmar (Nick Westrate) operates a modest photography studio, where he also resides with his supportive wife Gina (Melanie Field), their sensitive young daughter Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn) and his doddering old dad (David Patrick Kelly), along with a small menagerie harboring a wild duck in an attic. Suddenly reentering Hjalmar’s little world after a 15-year absence – no need to detail why – is his boyhood chum Gregers Werle (Alexander Hurt), who rents a room right across the hall from the Ekdals.
Gregers quickly proves to be an uncompromising douche who believes it’s best for people to face up to absolute truth rather than live with pleasant illusions like Hjalmar, who idly dreams of somehow becoming a great inventor. Like other Ibsen dramas, the past arises to wreck the present when Gregers questions Gina’s former ties to his wealthy, widowed father (Robert Stanton). The weak, sadly impressionable Hjalmar falls apart emotionally, other revelations follow and Ibsen’s story turns stupidly tragic. Making the play feel even colder is how the insufferable Gregers stays smug and righteous to the bitter end.
[Read David Finkle’s ★★★★☆ review here.]
First staged in London in 2005, David Eldridge’s tidy two-act version of the work receives a solid co-production by TFANA (with the Shakespeare Theatre Company of Washington D.C.) that is marred by miscasting, about which keep on reading. Simon Godwin, the director, fosters a melancholy mood, beginning with keening 19th century violin music performed by Alexander Sovronsky, who briefly portrays a guest at the dinner party scene that opens the play and later returns for more wistful fiddling. Godwin and Andrew Boyce, the scenic designer, acknowledge the drama’s 1880s conventions in this initial sequence by situating several gorgeous pieces of Victorian furniture against a noticeably painted theater panel of that period depicting a well-to-do parlor. Such heightened visuals clue the audience to listen up to the Ibsen-esque floods of exposition that spill about the Hjalmar-Gregers friendship and related matters helpful to recall later in the drama.
The remainder of The Wild Duck happens over the next few days in Hjalmar’s studio, a lofty space dominated by a vast glass-paneled angled roof and a flight of stairs leading to the attic door. The era’s cumbersome photography equipment remains in the background as the Ekdal family gathers around a table during a sweet scene of domestic contentment soon fouled by Gregers, described by an observer as a man suffering from “chronic righteousness.”
A significant flaw in Godwin’s production is his casting of Hurt in the crucial role of Gregers: A capable actor with bleak, saturnine features and dark, hooded eyes, Hurt looks and behaves like a killjoy from the get-go. Dressed in black, the actor often voices Gregers’ insinuations and exhortations in a low, intense monotone that suggests Asperger’s syndrome. Hurt’s shark-like presence is unnecessarily malevolent, when presenting a cheerful, do-gooder sort of Gregers might be more surprising for the havoc he creates. The baleful quality of Hurt’s Gregers shades Westrate’s foolish Hjalmar, who seems like even more of a loser than he really is for being influenced so easily by such a creepy guy.
Field offers a sincere portrayal of Gina as a sensible, warmhearted woman who understands Hjalmar’s fragile being, loves him anyway and strives to keep him content. Laanstra-Corn gives gawky Hedvig a naive sweetness and an impulsive nature not unlike Hjalmar (an interesting comment regarding her questionable parentage). Other performances are apt, including those by Mahira Kakkar as a matron confident in her abundant charms and Matthew Saldívar as a neighbor who calls out Gregers’ troublemaking ways.
That said, a preview last Wednesday at TFANA’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center generally seemed a trifle off-kilter; at times, audience laughter appeared generated not by the characters’ inherent humor so much as awkwardness among certain actors. Probably subsequent performances have been smoother, but one hopes the patently artificial quality of sound effects for slamming doors, gunshots and quacking poultry will be improved when the show moves to its Washington D.C. engagement in October.
The Wild Duck opened September 14, 2025, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through September 28. Tickets and information: tfana.org
