THE WILD DUCK - Henrik Ibsen

I’ve got to say, this play - “The Wild Duck” by Henrik Ibsen - was a struggle.

Obviously, from reading three of his other plays and reading about Ibsen, I know that he (and his plays) are venerated.

And I know that this play is regarded as among his best.

Thing is… I really don’t care for it.

And I tried. I REALLY tried. After reading it, I scoured around online to find a video of a staged performance. Then, still very disappointed, I watched a movie version of the story (a bit better), and then another movie based on the play but with significant differences (VERY good). But the play itself I found didn't quite do it for me.

My main criticism, and I’ll get more specific, is that for a play by the father of theatre realism… I didn’t find it very bloody realistic. Broadly speaking, people’s motivations seemed poorly established, plotted actions didn’t seem to follow logically or with great likelihood, several key characters are poorly fleshed out and (again, in my mind) it reduced a key issue to a throw away plot device.

The elements I liked

But I’ll begin with what I liked or thought worked.

Like the other three other Ibsen plays I’ve reviewed, the title of “The Wild Duck” does pretty good job of summarising a key theme. Several key characters but especially Hedvig, daughter of protagonist Hjalmar Ekdal, felt like a wild duck… like a creature that didn’t belong. 

But probably the key theme was that of living a life of truth versus living a lie. This is cleverly supported by the motif of blindness. Two characters are losing their eyesight, and there is a game of blind man’s bluff, underscoring the contention that Hjalmar and his family are living less than a complete life because it is based on lies that some of them are unaware of. And it also serves as a clue to a plot point, so triple threat!

Another element that I thought well was the contrasting of Hjalmar’s returned bestie, Gregers Werle, and a doctor called Relling who lives below the Ekdal’s apartment. Gregers champions the primacy of truth in all things, whereas. Relling (like Orr in catch 22) provides an alternative and believes lies and fantasies can build hope that cold hard realities may not. Relling’s discussion where he explains several of the lies he has told, to Hjalmar and Molvik in particular, were deliberately created to provide comfort.

The play returns to some of Ibsen’s previously used themes… keeping up appearances, hope and idealism versus acceptance of one’s fate, the vapidness of society events. It features the clever recurring use of symbols and motifs and even drops a few hints to points later revealed so the audience feels the reveals have been provided fairly.

I like the themes and the ideas… so why didn’t it work for me? In my opinion, it fell over in the story telling

In summary (including spoilers)

Gregers has been away from home for some time on a self-imposed exile, and catches up with his father, Hakon (the local richie rich land baron). Hakon advises that Greger’s old mate Hjalmar married Hakon’s former maid Gina, whom Greger’s deceased mum thought Hakon was having an affair with. Hakon had even helped set Hjalmar’s relationship with Gina in place, resulting in (for reasons that I don’t think were made abundantly clear in the text) Gregers, in a fit of idealistic fervour, deciding to commence a “truth at all costs” crusade.

Gregers heads off to stay at Hjalmar’s place to start hammering home some home truths, whether the Ekbal’s like it or not.

So let’s set up their home. Hjalmar lives with his wife Gina, his daughter Hedvig, and his slightly doddering dad “Old Ekdal” Living below them are a doctor (Relling) and a theological student (Molvik). Old Ekdal spends most of his time in the attic where there are animals including pigeons, rabbits and a Wild Duck that has become Hedviog’s de facto pet which she loves dearly. The duck was shot some years ago by Hakon but it survived and he gave it to Old Ekdal to look after. 

SIDENOTE: They tell the story that wild ducks, when injured, dive to the bottom of the pond/like/river and grab hold of a reed or branch to drown themselves rather than live on injured. This is used as a central plot device but I’ve looked it up and it’s not true. Myth busted!

The story from this point is more confusing with a bunch of slightly extraneous elements and I think that’s part of the reason motivations were insufficiently established and reasonable responses were poorly earned, so I’ll shorten it. 

Gregers lets his old mate know that his wife had had an affair with Greger’s dad, Hakon, before Hakon set her up with Hjalmar. The script keeps the timing of the affair frustratingly vague, but Hjalmar is upset at this secret being kept from him. Then, shortly after… and I mean unbelievably shortly after… a letter from Hakon arrives offering to pay a pension to Old Ekbal for the remainder of his days (there’s a side story that Hakon and Old Ekbal had done some wrong together for which Old Ekbal took the fall, and the jail time) AND once he passes away, to financially assist Hedvig. 

I should mention, the suddenly generous old Hakon is losing his sight, and so too is Hedvig with a hereditary disease neither of her parents appear to have. Hjalmar wonders why Hakon would suddenly want to pay for… hey, wait a second. Is Hedvig my daughter, he asks his wife. Umm, maybe? Hard to be sure, she replies. Hjalmar storms out, I can’t keep living this lie. He tells his Hedvig he can’t bear to even look at her now and storms off.

Hedvig is confused. Why doesn’t dad love me any more. He even said he wanted to kill Ducky. Enter Captain Truthypants Gregers who tells her she should make some meaningful sacrifice, like killing her duck, to prove her love for her dad. She makes a different sacrifice and takes her own life shortly after overhearing Hjalmar ask “would she lay down her life for me.”

What I didn’t like

The first thing I didn’t buy was the rapidity and largely unprompted and unearned epiphany by Gregers that he must start spreading the Gospel of truth everywhere. Was it because his dad used to date his mate’s current wife? Or even that his dad set the pair up. I read it a few times feeling I’d missed something that led to his dramatic response but if it’s there I didn’t see it.

I felt the kind of restrained response Hjalmar had when he was first advised about his wife’s affair with Hakon was in stark contrast to his sudden revulsion at his daughter when the other shoe dropped and he figured out he may not be the biological father of Hedvig. Yep, upset I get. Needing to get his head straight, I get. But his onslaught of aggression seemed pretty OTT. Still, that’s not as big a concern as the previous point though. Or the next one.

The whole final sequence around Hedvig’s suicide seems poorly assembled. Her decision didn’t to take her didn’t seem at all earned and seemed a bit of a “girlfriend in the fridge”. Let me explain. There is a pop culture term called “fridging”, “girlfriend in a fridge” or “woman in a fridge.” It comes from, of all places, graphic novels/comics where a young superhero Kyle Rayner (Green lantern) had a girlfriend written into his storyline, whom he fell madly in love with, and then in a short period of time came home to find a really bad guy had killed her and placed her body in Kyle’s fridge. 

The term has expanded to other areas of literature, cinema, TV etc to refer to the creation of a character who is not fleshed out and given no agency to then suffer or be killed as a plot device just so a major character can be affected. I feel that’s what Hedvig is to this play. And while I know very well that suicides can come undetected, unexpected and with few signs, I don’t feel this is that… this death seems to happen solely for the emotional gut punch. 

Also, the reactions afterwards are rushed and a bit odd, and the discussion (again by the increasingly heartless Gregers) just minutes after Hedvig’s death, that this will give Hjalmar great emotional and philosophical clarity and will be the making of him, and that it won’t be long before he forgets she even existed. 

I realise… I think I realise.. that Ibsen is choosing to remind us of the heartlessness of truth over compassionate lies, but I found it a ghoulish choice for the end. And I guess that’s the note the playwright wanted people to walk away with, so fair enough I suppose.

I even read up on some essays about the various themes, some of hich I understood, or agreed with… quite a few I missed completely… and I could reproduce some of their points, but these were the ones that stuck out for me.

Filmed versions

So for various reasons this didn’t sit so well with me. And I actually felt a mix of being dopey or guilty for not enjoying this more. It IS a highly regarded play. So I watched from start to finish three complete versions to see if it worked (for me) on stage.

The first I saw was the 1971 BBC Play of the Month version directed by Alan Bridges and starring Denholm Elliott as Hjalmar and a very young Jenny Agutter as Hedvig. The acting was very good, so too the staging and it was very faithful to the original play script. But I still didn’t love it for the same reasons.

The next version, working my way through them chronologically, was the 1983 Australian movie with specially imported stars Jeremy Irons as Hjalmar (called Harold in this) and Liv Ullmann as Gina. Ullman actually IS Norwegian … not sure what that adds to an Australian interpretation but she’s very good. This version was pretty close to the original. Obviously the place and time period had changed. Old Ekbaln (Old Ackland), played by John Mellion, was no longer doddering and Hakon (now Wardle), played by former Matlock Police boss Michael Pate, seemed a bit more likeable. Still, the arcs of Gregers and Hedvig seemed short of what they needed to be and those are pretty important roles to flesh out.

Almost giving up hope, I discovered that a second Aussie version existed. Called “The Daughter” and made in 2015 and featuring an all-star cast (Sam Neill, Geoffrey Rush, Anna Torv, Miranda Otto and others), THIS version redeemed the story for me. As the title indicates, it was NOT an entirely faithful version of the original play by Ibsen. But by moving things around a little, editing out some bits that added little and by building motivation into all of the key arcs this version really worked for me (I gave it 9/10, not that that means anything). Sam Neill in particular in the Old Ekbal character was even further away from doddering than John Meillion’s portrayal. Greger’s motivation made sense, Hedvig’s decision seemed more realistic… so many of the core great ideas by Ibsen worked in this rendition.

Would it work in Goulburn today?

I have used this final section to wrap up the previous reviews I’ve written. And as this is an evolving project I realise how stupid and arrogant that question is. Anything that has worked elsewhere can work in Goulburn today. Some shows that haven’t worked anywhere could work in Goulburn today. And if I say it couldn’t, there’s bound to be someone rubbing their hands together in the knowledge they could make it work, and they’d probably be right. And of course who am I to say what could work.

At the end of the day, theatre (like any of the arts we consume) is in the eye of the beholder. I didn’t love this play because I thought the playwright didn’t earn the motivations and outcomes … that some choices seemed discordant and distracting.

But this show has worked in many places, for nigh on 150 years. So yeah, it could work here. But you’d need to do a lot of script analysis, figure out directorial and acting choices that make the arcs seem less stark, jarring and sudden. And even though I’m pretty committed to letting the play be the play and not defying the writers intent, maybe shop around for the most suitable translation or consider (as people have to when they regularly shorten the 4 hour hamlet) if minor edits can allow people greater access to the central themes and meanings that are really quite striking.

Materials accessed:

• “The Wild Duck,” - script. Various places, here’s one - the UK Public Library.
• “The Wild Duck,” - Video (1971) BBC Play of the Month version.
• “The Wild Duck,” - Video (1983) Australian movie.
• “The Daughter” - Video (2015) An Australian movie inspired by The Wild Duck, available by subscription on Stan.