A Wild Duck, Goosed

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Ibsen, already at his centennial, can sometimes feel rather more like a chore than a joy. Old Henrik’s works, so many of them rigorously moral and admonishing, can go down like medicine. But in a fresh, speedy, nearly pell-mell production of “The Wild Duck” that just finished spreading its wings at BAM, the National Theater of Norway trims the fat off the bird, ruthlessly razoring out Ibsen’s insistent repetition of his themes and morals. What’s left behind, paradoxically enough, are his themes and morals. But now, they are light enough to get off the ground.

Hjalmar Ekdal (Gard Eidsvold) owes everything to the Werle family. His father, old Ekdal (Kai Remlov) draws a salary from them for rudimentary copying work, and his own photography business got a boost from the Werle paterfamilias (Bjørn Skagestad) when he introduced Hjalmar to his dear wife (and the Werle’s ex-housekeeper), Gina (Ågot Sendstad).

Hjalmar is the type to fit securely under other men’s thumbs — largely because his position as an industrious provider for daughter Hedvig (Birgitte Larsen) is entirely subsidized. This leaves him enough time to hunt rabbits with his pop in their loft and to obsess over the wild duck, a feathered bit of symbolism that simultaneously means shattered innocence, freedom from civilization’s hypocrisies, and the suicidal impulse. But when the not-entirely-prodigal son Gregers Werle (Eindride Eidsvold) clomps down from the mountains after a long time away, he decides to wash the sand from Ekdal’s eyes, showing him the truth of his marriage and a way to live free of untruth.

With its five acts cut down into a two-hour, uninterrupted running time, the occasional plot point does wind up on the cutting room floor. But director Eirik Stubø and his collaborator Ole Skjelbred often leave a little hole, a memorial pause for what they have taken out. For instance, where once there was a vituperative fight between the Werles in which Gregers obliquely threatens to off himself, there is now simply an awful silence. Well, those two guys never could communicate. The cuts also rest the production completely on Hjalmar’s shoulders. All other mysteries, old grudges, and even impassioned belief systems now just hover above him, barely distracting from this titanic portrait of human weakness.

Though American theater seems to think that one has to choose between visual precision and organically realistic acting styles, this Norse company seems not to have gotten that message. Relationships and behavior are photorealistic: Lovely bits of comedy surface while people set the table, or a couple, still in love, clowns around by themselves. The Ekdal family never hits a false note — Ms. Sendstad’s gentle, wifely prodding almost made me want to do the dishes. Under Mr. Stubø’s careful direction, the cast never strikes poses or telegraphs the mathematical precision of the blocking. And yet, surgical stage pictures float to the surface, like photos in a chemical bath.

Kari Gravklev’s set — a grey carpet and a long, eight-foot-high wall of wood laminate — slices coolly across the stage, limiting the playing area to a space nearly the size of a small apartment. The vastness of the stage beyond the wall — a black void others peep into from ladders and chairs and their daddy’s shoulders — stands in for the Ekdal’s indoor zoo. The real coup of this production, though, the visual metaphor for the way it mixes human warmth and terrible, metaphysical cold, lies in Ellen Ruge’s masterful lighting. In a time when we are most suspicious of ideologies, when the Gregers Werles of the world have the weaklings so securely in their grasp, her unforgiving use of light would have made even Ibsen blink.


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