{"id":227091,"date":"2025-09-14T21:29:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T21:29:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227091\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T21:29:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T21:29:11","slug":"the-wild-duck-foul-doings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/227091\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wild Duck: Foul Doings"},"content":{"rendered":"

September 14, 2025 4:01 pm <\/p>\n

By Michael Sommers<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Ibsen\u2019s tragicomedy depicts a family wrecked by a righteous friend<\/p>\n

\"\"Maaike Laanstra-Corn, Melanie Field and Alexander Hurt in The Wild Duck. Photo: Hollis King.<\/p>\n

The Wild Duck\u00a0is a fascinating play and considered among Henrik Ibsen\u2019s finest, yet his 1884 tragicomedy is staged scarcely as often as other major works such as\u00a0A Doll\u2019s House. The last time the play landed on Broadway was 1967. Opening on Sunday, Theatre for a New Audience\u2019s production suggests why\u00a0The Wild Duck\u00a0is a rare bird these days: Even by Ibsen\u2019s standards for sorrow, it\u2019s a nasty story.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s little world after a 15-year absence \u2013 no need to detail why \u2013 is his boyhood chum Gregers Werle (Alexander Hurt), who rents a room right across the hall from the Ekdals.<\/p>\n

Gregers quickly proves to be an uncompromising douche who believes it\u2019s 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\u2019s former ties to his wealthy, widowed father (Robert Stanton). The weak, sadly impressionable Hjalmar falls apart emotionally, other revelations follow and Ibsen\u2019s story turns stupidly tragic. Making the play feel even colder is how the insufferable Gregers stays smug and righteous to the bitter end.<\/p>\n

[Read David Finkle\u2019s \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606 review here.<\/a>]<\/p>\n

First staged in London in 2005, David Eldridge\u2019s 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\u00a0century 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The remainder of\u00a0The Wild Duck\u00a0happens over the next few days in Hjalmar\u2019s studio, a lofty space dominated by a vast glass-paneled angled roof and a flight of stairs leading to the attic door. The era\u2019s 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 \u201cchronic righteousness.\u201d<\/p>\n

A significant flaw in Godwin\u2019s 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\u2019 insinuations and exhortations in a low, intense monotone that suggests Asperger\u2019s syndrome. Hurt\u2019s 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\u2019s Gregers shades Westrate\u2019s foolish Hjalmar, who seems like even more of a loser than he really is for being influenced so easily by such a creepy guy.<\/p>\n

Field offers a sincere portrayal of Gina as a sensible, warmhearted woman who understands Hjalmar\u2019s 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 Sald\u00edvar as a neighbor who calls out Gregers\u2019 troublemaking ways.<\/p>\n

That said, a preview last Wednesday at TFANA\u2019s Polonsky Shakespeare Center generally seemed a trifle off-kilter; at times, audience laughter appeared generated not by the characters\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

The Wild Duck opened September 14, 2025, at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center and runs through September 28. Tickets and information: tfana.org<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"September 14, 2025 4:01 pm By Michael Sommers \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606 Ibsen\u2019s tragicomedy depicts a family wrecked by a righteous…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":227092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-227091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-city","11":"tag-newyork","12":"tag-newyorkcity","13":"tag-ny","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}