Word: ekdals
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...convoluted plot revolves around the Ekdals, an unremarkable, unpretentious, but reasonably happy lower-middle class family whose domestic peace is about to be shattered by unwanted revelations from the past. (Mark that "unwanted"--it's essential to understanding the play as a whole.) The opening scene, however, is laid not in the Ekdal home but in the rich red study of the wealthy businessman Hakon Werle (Jeremy Geidt), who is hosting a dinner party in honor of his only son, Gregers (Stephen Rowe). We learn that the two men have been estranged for many years, but that old Werle...
...rest of the play takes place in the Ekdal apartment, a modest but comfortably homelike apartment of which we see only the kitchen and studio. Here Hjalmer rules as king, with a devoted wife (Karen MacDonald) and adoring daughter Hedvig (Emma Roberts) who lavish their care on him and serve him almost slavishly. Here, too, his aged father (Jerome Kilty) can forget his disgrace in alcohol--when he can get it. There is a storeroom which he has converted into a small forest with a few pine trees and some rabbits, where he can relive his days as a great...
...upbraiding and cringing from his father reveals a man deeply resentful of his father's betrayal of his mother, and perhaps also of the force of simple virility that he himself lacks. Stephen Rowe throws a downright spooky cast on to the character's obsession with Hjalmer and the Ekdal family--and the wild duck, its most obvious metaphor. Even down-to-earth, matter-of-fact Gina Ekdal, somewhat heavily played by Karen MacDonald, shows signs of guilt and unease about her past, despite her assertions to the contrary. Hedvig, with her luminous innocence and child's intuition...
...that evoke the more serious themes embodied by Hedvig: for example, the transition from the first to second act, when the movable stage representing Werle's study gradually sinks out of sight while the guests are playing (symbolically?) Blindman's Buff; or the moment when the lighting in the Ekdal apartment gradually alters to create an image of a deep pine forest against the backdrop walls. And again, just as powerful is the suggestion of what is not seen--the wild duck, who at intervals is heard faintly quacking, and the room in which she nests...