Ibsen production that cramps its star's style - The Lady from the Sea, Donmar Warehouse, review
All the conditions looked propitious for this revival of Ibsen’s mysterious portrait of an aquaphiliac woman who’s caught between the devil of a tired, oppressive marriage and the deep blue sea of a more primal and threatening relationship.
A new adaptation from Elinor Cook, winner of the George Devine Award for Most Promising Playwright in 2013. Direction by Kwame Kwei-Armah, newly appointed to run the Young Vic. And in the role of the enigmatic Ellida, the ever-watchable Nikki Amuka-Bird, star of the recent TV adaptation of Zadie Smith’s NW. Yet while Amuka-Bird radiates an intriguing remoteness, she struggles to make her mark in a production that for too much of the evening seems all at sea.
We’re told that the action has been transposed from Norway to a Caribbean island “sometime in the mid-1950s”. In geographical terms, there’s a slight hitch. In the Ibsen, one of the motors of Ellida’s frustration is that her marriage to doctor Wangel has brought this light-house keeper’s daughter into the mountains; when she swims in a fjord she finds the water lifeless. Here the sense of isolation is more forced: she’s high up, in a house “shrouded in trees”, but still able to take herself off to “the lagoon” (which she dismisses, without elaboration, as “like swimming in ink”) – and popping to the “marina” sounds easy enough.
These are minor details, but they have the drip-drip effect of draining the requisite specificity. More importantly, the cultural context seems wishy-washy. There are references to a “carnival”, but this restrained re-interpretation populates the stage with white faces, much as any average rep revival might. The pay-off is that when the menacing-alluring itinerant figure from her past surfaces to “reclaim” her as his wife, Ellida’s accent regains its lilt and her choice acquires shades of colonial reckoning. Yet no one talks about the island’s politics and it’s left to us to flesh out the related point that in redefining her marriage to Wangel (Finbar Lynch, spectral frail and unprepossessing beside the robust Jake Fairbrother as the rugged-ethereal interloper), Ellida might be striking a broader blow for self-determination.
The character talks of feeling rootless but with scant sense of tropical heat, or natural beauty, who wouldn’t? Using peeling wooden boards to cover the stage and create a moss-supplemented backdrop, designer Tom Scutt drapes a bulky white framing structure with trails of hibiscus and bougainvillea. But there’s also an intrusive tank of murky water which, with its model island and sunken treasures, put me in mind of a Centre Parcs splash-pool; into this our mermaidy heroine and her not-so-gentlemanly caller dip, bathetically, from time to time.
There are some fine supporting performances – Tom McKay lends furtive ardency to limping visitor and former tutor Arnholm, while Helena Wilson and Ellie Bamber impress as Wangel’s restive, independent-minded daughters. What matters, though, is that Amuka-Bird spread her wings – but this version cramps her style. When the Donmar is good it’s very very good; but when it’s bad it’s perplexing.
Until Dec 2. Tickets: 020 3282 3808; donmarwarehouse.com
