When I mentioned to theater-knowledgeable friends that I was about to see a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, they all announced they’d never actually seen a production.
No surprise there. In a long theater-going career, I’ve only seen it staged once and, admiring what I saw, was eager to return now. This is after having attended productions within the last few years of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and Ghosts, those repeatedly mounted plays from the Ibsen canon. (Hedda Gabler anyone?) Furthermore, I’ve watched Peer Gynt several times, a piece which many Ibsen-ites, including me, are convinced is absolutely unproducible.
So, what is it about The Wild Duck that’s so off-putting? Often categorized as a tragicomedy, I don’t see it that way. I consider it an unadulterated tragedy and am joined in that judgment by Simon Godwin, who’s directed this new outing. Indeed, it’s likely the drama’s inexorable events leading to ultimate despair may explain its absence from playhouses. (When it bowed in 1885, critical reception was mixed, but that was par for the Ibsen course.)
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★☆☆ review here.]
The Wild Duck, in a David Eldrige version that debuted at London’s Donmar Warehouse in 2005, concerns two dysfunctional families, which is hardly ground-breaking. The quintessential dysfunctional-family play is not restricted to 20th century American plays. It’s endemic to plays from the Greek theater; Oedipus Rex is about a dysfunctional family. So, later, are William Shakespeare’s King Lear and Hamlet.
Initially, the family in The Wild Duck is the Werle family, whose patriarch Håkon Werle (Robert Stanton) is a domineering bigwig in their small Norwegian community. Son Gregers (Alexander Hurt) buckles under his father’s domination. In Ibsen’s first act (of five presented here in two acts), both father and son have just finished dinner where 13 were at table, a tip-off to the tragedy’s impending downward spiral.
Also at the predominately jovial occasion are Old Ekdal (David Patrick Kelly), once the elder Werle’s partner and now a subservient and humiliated employee, and Hjalmar Ekdal (Nick Westrate), a friend to Gregers and a self-proclaimed inventor of nothing yet who’s grateful to be included.
Ibsen’s first act is something of a prologue, the remaining acts descend to utter disarray in the high-ceilinged Ekdal household. (Set designer Andrew Boyce does a bang-up job of creating spacious gloom). It’s there where dysfunction edges into its death spin.
Involved like flies on sticky paper are Gina (Melanie Field), Hjalmar’s congenitally accomplished wife; his father, who continually disappears behind an upper level door where he tends to an in-house animal collection; and 14-year-old daughter Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn), who’s slowly losing her sight while compulsively tending, in her grandfather’s menagerie, to a wounded wild duck. Residing downstairs in Greger’s beset dwelling is Relling (Matthew Saldívar), a doctor who, as internecine clashes accumulate, is a not entirely effective calming influence.
It’s Relling who introduces the phrase “chronic righteousness” and defines it as “a national disease.” In large part Relling’s—and Ibsen’s—”chronic righteousness” explains what leads to the pay-off on Ibsen’s most prominent theme: the pros and cons (mostly cons) of family illusions exposed.
This isn’t a fresh literary theme, but Ibsen’s treatment strenuously delves into new ground when Gregers decides to quit his father’s home and seek refuge in Hjalmar’s. The request is humble, but once ensconced he sets about fulfilling another motive for invading the already uneasy Ekdal residence.
He knows a secret about the Ekdals he believes will set them free when revealed and so goes about proving his theory. (Yes, here’s the familiar theme of bringing secrets and lies to the harsh light of day—in this instance, Norwegian light of day, Stacey Derosier the lighting designer further substantiating the prevailing gloom.)
Hip to the wayward ways of the world, Relling also comments on what he terms the “life lie,” saying “If you take the life lie from an ordinary man then you take away his happiness as well.” Clearly, he’s speaking for Ibsen declaring his conviction about humanity’s need to maintain precious illusions.
The result is the kind of irreparable upheaval that many contemporary audiences will resist because, perhaps, they suspect Ibsen merely wanted to see how far he could stretch credulity without structuring it organically.
Yet, however it’s taken in by way of the Eldridge “version,” this rare Wild Duck manifestation is recommended to Ibsen completists. Godwin, who no question has given it much expansive thought, zeroes in on Ibsen’s unmistakable opinion that men are the weaker sex. Furthermore, he directs his cast with insightful aplomb—not a weak link among them.
So, what about that wounded titular duck? Ibsen noted that in his earlier plays he avoided symbolism and so decided to load symbols into this one with a vengeance. At first, the never-seen bird is a symbol for Hedvig. (Don’t miss her incipient blindness as another blatant symbol.) But before Ibsen reaches his black-as-night blackout, he sees to it that just about all his characters are revealed to be wounded wild ducks.
So much so that spectators may exit feeling they’ve merged with the wounded. Not, however, a reason to miss this welcome, possibly once-in-a-lifetime revival.
The Wild Duck opened September 14, 2025, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through September 28. Tickets and information: tfana.org
