The Wild Duck

Overview

To tell or not to tell. It's almost as complex as 'to be or not to be', as anyone who has had the misfortune of uncovering a friend-related secret will testify.

It's no surprise then that The Wild Duck, which deals with this very subject matter, is considered to be the most complex of Ibsen's plays. The general run down is this. The apparently happy Ekdal family welcomes the return of family friend Gregers Werle, a noble and excruciatingly honest soul. Gregers proceeds to dig to the bottom of said family and bring to light everything he finds, eventually resulting in Mrs. Ekdal's suicide. The lesson: that honesty is perhaps not always the best policy.

Rather than running with the hurdles already in his path, adaptor/director Simon Stone has decided to add an additional layer of complexity on top. Stone places the suicide at the centre of this production, retelling the tale from the point of view of six key characters. In doing so, he re-inscribes into the play Kierkegaard's thoughts on subjectivity, which Ibsen consciously referenced in his works. Emphasising the irreducibility of this fatal act, Stone implies that assigning responsibility for the suicide is impossible, thus removing any objectivity from the work. The ultimate lesson, then, is in the hands of the 'single individual'.

It's sophisticated stuff. Yet Stone's back catalog of radical reworkings assures us that he can handle it. It certainly won't hurt to have the incredibly skilled Ewen Leslie (STC's The Trial) and Toby Schmitz (of Benedict Andrews' Measure For Measure) in the two key roles either.

Image: Toby Schmitz and Ewen Leslie, Photo Wilk, courtesy of Belvoir Theatre