Alternate Title Vildanden
Premiere US Premiere
Production Language Norwegian
Country of Origin Norway
Description Regarded by many as Ibsen's masterwork, The Wild Duck has pride of place in Norway's National Theatre. But rather than present it as a museum piece, artistic director Eirik Stubø (in his US debut) has set the action in the late 1950s, an era marked by a certain innocence yet far from Ibsen's own—think Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys. This shift sheds a radical new light on the play. So do subtle changes in the original text that both modernize and heighten Ibsen's themes, allowing us to see the characters not as archetypes but as plausible individuals.
The play begins as Gregers Werle returns home for the first time in fifteen years and is reunited with his wealthy father and his boyhood friend, Hjalmar Ekdal, who has married the Werles' former housemaid. Over the course of a few days the idealistic Gregers sets upon exposing the many secrets that bind these seemingly happy families together. The events that ensue reveal Ibsen's tragic exploration of the destructive nature of truth.
Identifier 2006f.00853
