Word: ekdals
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...Wild Duck, the archrealist Ibsen conceded-long before O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh-that men need illusions to survive. The Ekdal family are happy so long as Hialmar Ekdal is ignorant of his wife's past and the true paternity of his child. Ibsen's exposure of Gregers Werle, the meddling idealist who enlightens Hialmar in the name of truth, is merciless. But his portrayal of flabby, feckless, self-excusing Hialmar is hardly less...
Laurels for acting must be distributed to all hands. But particularly to Miss Yurka as Gina, Mr. Anderson as the younger Ekdal, Mr. Clovelly as Gregers Werle, and to Miss Davis in the exceedingly trying role of Hedvig. These four, carrying the brunt of the acting, make the play an intensely human thing. They demonstrate beyond a possible doubt that regardless of what may be said as to Ibsen or his plays, in talented hands the two can be put across...
Blanche Yurka is tall, almost burly. As the placid wife of improvidential Hjalmar Ekdal in The Wild Duck she filled an ample role to which her body, her accomplishments and her God better suit her than the tense thing to which she has tried to suit herself in Hedda Gabler. She gives a certain effect of languor, but it is the languor, not of a bitter neurotic, but of a temporarily awakened marble slowly reverting to stone...
...enemy of most people because he told the truth, even when truth-telling was tantamount to telling tales. Gregers Werle, the son of a rich Norwegian mine-owner, suspected that his libertine father had disposed of an old mistress by marrying her to Hialmar Ekdal, the son of a man whom the libertine had ruined. Gregers Werle tattles to Hialmar Ekdal, who is much too little a fool to disbelieve him. Knowing that his adolescent daughter is really the child of another man, he snubs her love for him, wherefore she kills herself...
...unobtrusive wife of Ekdal in last week's "Wild Duck," Blanche Yurka failed to stand out from her supporting cast as much as some had expected. In truth the part did not call for it, nor did Miss Yurka care to undermine the brilliant work of others in the cast. In such self effacement she was living up to the traditions of great acting...