The Wild Duck - Henrik Ibsen - A new version by Frank McGuinness

Dublin: Peacock Theatre
July 3 - August 16

wildduck.jpg (15758 bytes)

Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography
(2001), Robert Ferguson

    Gregors Werle (Frank McCusker), the moody son of wealthy businessman (Vincent McCabe) returns home after a long absence only to find that his old friend Hjalmar (Denis Conway) has been virtually adopted by the old man. Hjalmar has been equipped with the means to establish a small photographic studio. His own doddery father, the old man’s disgraced former business partner (Des Nealon), has been given charitable clerical work with inflated pay, and, most significantly, Hjalmar has married Gina (Andrea Irvine), former housemaid to the elder Werle who ran afoul of the old man’s now deceased wife many years before.
    Hjalmar is happy enough with his life, and seems to have a rounded relationship with his wife and his daughter Hedvig (Judith Roddy). The family live in a converted attic with a room for rent next door and two cheerfully drunken neighbors living beneath them, Dr. Relling (Chris McHallem) and Molvic (David Gorry). They also keep a small menagerie, the latest addition to which is a wounded wild duck which Hedvig watches over with particular care. The bird, another gift from the household of the elder Werle becomes more than just a convenient and multi-leveled metaphor for Gregors, driven by his own social and psychological demons to decry his privileged upbringing and the sins of his father. Aware of a past secret which is not very hard to guess, he resolves to clear the air and force truth to ‘purify’ the lives of those around him, even if it means making sacrifices, or encouraging others to make them.
    In his efforts to purge his own troubled conscience, Gregors, proceeding out of what he perceives to be the best of motives, systematically destroys a family happily surviving on lies and illusions. The play’s most forceful thematic paradox is summed up at its climax. The haggard Dr. Relling, who has been saving lives by proffering necessary illusions, tells the obsessionally righteous, ‘truth telling’ Gregors "life would be fine if we could just be left in peace". The meaning of the image of the wild duck is multifold, but its unseen entrapment beneath a steel grille guarding the menagerie is a theatrical image which resonates deeply with the idea that some things are best left unsaid and some situations are left well enough alone.
    A Wild Duck was something of a shock to Norwegian audiences in 1884. Its savage attack upon the nominally righteous behavior of the character who would previously have been one of Ibsen’s heroes seemed to turn the social critiques of A Doll's House, Ghosts, and A n E nemy of the People on their heads. It is a strong text, a powerfully dramatic social and psychological examination of the boundaries of emotional fulfillment. Carefully constructed with due attention for the social and economic details which ground the personal psychology, it challenges and confronts its audience without losing touch with solid, naturalistic storytelling. It was the bridging play between his enormously successful mid-career work and his more reflective and willfully ambiguous later plays including Hedda Gabler and John Gabriel Borkman.
    Irish playwright Frank McGuinness (Gates of Gold) began adapting Ibsen’s plays in 1987 with his acclaimed version of Rosmersholm, and has since presented new versions of Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler and A Doll’s House. He has also adapted Chekov, Lorca, Brecht, and even Ramón María del Valle-Inclán’s Barbaric Comedies. It is a sign of confidence in Irish theatre that playwrights such as McGuinness, Friel, and Kilroy have found comfortable congruencies in the work of major international dramatists. This version of A Wild Duck is gripping and involving for any audience, faithful to its source and yet with a distinctive voice of its own. McGuinness has cut a clear path through Ibsen’s original dialogue, subtly shifting idioms and elements of characterization to a local register without actually changing the setting. It speaks clearly to a contemporary Irish audience not least of all in its skepticism with the sermonizing mentality of its almost clerical antagonist.
    Hungarian director László Marton makes brilliant use of the stage at the Peacock, with excellent blocking and precise movement which succeeds in sustaining the illusion of naturalism in the presence of a symbolically and thematically charged space. Every actor seems comfortable with the complexities of the text and every nuance of psychosocial tension has been drawn out though controlled yet fluid direction. Paul Keogan’s lighting is evocative, making use of identifiable light sources on stage drawn from the setting in a photographer’s studio. The lighting also reflects the theme of encroaching and unrealized blindness. As the play progresses, there is less and less light on the stage, and yet the space is illuminated sufficiently at all times for the audience to understand the full meaning of each character’s place and position.