{"id":1006,"date":"2014-10-30T16:01:42","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T16:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1006"},"modified":"2014-11-17T12:08:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-17T12:08:51","slug":"angry-bird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2014\/10\/angry-bird.html","title":{"rendered":"Angry bird"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wild<\/a><\/p>\n

Belvoir Theatre’s Wild Duck<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shall we start with the duck? Ibsen\u2019s stage directions keep the titular Wild Duck<\/em> offstage. It remains a symbol of damage, or survival, or of secrecy long-subsumed. Well, pellets to that, because Belvoir Theatre from Sydney, whose lacerating 2011 production <\/a>is at London\u2019s Barbican<\/a>, give us plenty of chances to see and adore a real live, flapping mallard. Twitter pleasingly responded with variants of \u2018wild? It was livid.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

This is year of the feather at the Barbican: following Fiona Shaw\u2019s uncompromising duet with a vulture in The Testament of Mary<\/em> <\/a>(spectators wandered onstage beforehand and share a photo at talon\u2019s distance), comes the Belvoir duck. This instantly endearing bird opens the show with an inquisitive solo: exploring the space, holding the audience in the palm of its, um, web. Mocking Parisians at the 1891 French premiere of Ibsen\u2019s play quacked whenever the duck was mentioned: we soppy Brits were in danger of smothering the show in aaahs.<\/p>\n

Belvoir\u2019s show <\/a>is often woundingly funny but resolutely non-cute, so wherefore the duck? It\u2019s something about realness, about innocence. A duck cannot lie, but human characters are built up of the deceits they\u2019ve told and received, the secrets they\u2019ve half-understood, the love they\u2019ve offered and withheld. A duck is just, blessedly, a duck. People are a whole other can of worms, writhing and ready to spill.<\/p>\n

A duck is just\u00a0a duck. People are a whole other can of worms<\/strong><\/p>\n

Belvoir say the play is \u2018after Ibsen.\u2019 How far after? Director Simon Stone and co-writer Chris Ryan offer a contemporary, Australian context but retain the original Norwegian names. The bones of the story are still evident \u2013 indeed, even more apparent, unforgiving spokes on which the narrative runs. As Alison Croggan<\/a> perceptively wrote of the original production, \u2018you walk out of the theatre feeling that you have just watched an Ibsen play. The sinews of Ibsen\u2019s obsessions \u2013 the past that haunts and destroys the present, inheritance and paternity, the social critique of class and gender, the plutonium-enriched explosion of truth \u2013 are boldly translated into present day forms.\u2019<\/p>\n

Gregers Werle, a rich magnate\u2019s wandering son, has come home for his father\u2019s second wedding. When he learns that his father and Gina, now married to his longtime friend Hjalmar, had an affair around the time she became pregnant, he decides he has a duty to reveal the long-held secret. It doesn\u2019t go well. Discussion of the play often centres on Gregers \u2013 the idealist who, pursuing impeccable liberal principles, wreaks terrible damage. While the tension in many of Ibsen\u2019s plays <\/a>is around breaking free of long-accrued deceit, the lies that bind and ultimately asphyxiate, The Wild Duck<\/em> upends the dynamic. Dishonesty can seal your tomb, but Gregers\u2019 machete of full disclosure is equally destructive.<\/p>\n

Stone and Ryan shift the focus decisively away from Gregers as the play develops. They\u2019re getting him to check his privilege \u2013 which enables Gregers, just like his father, to behave ethically and yet stroll away from the terrible consequences. The grim legacy of character from father to son is a recurring Ibsen motif: Dan Wyllie\u2019s Gregers is truculently resentful of his dad, but has nonetheless learnt the rules of engagement from him. He first appears with luggage in hand, and when he describes his serial short-lived relationships, it is clear that escape is always only a plane ticket away.<\/p>\n

Ibsen\u2019s play turns on the relationship between two friends; this radically narrowed version deepens into a tale of two families. It isn\u2019t merely unfulfilled Hjalmar who struggles with revelation, but his immediate family too. They all have more agency in this production \u2013 the practical if poorly-educated wife becomes a guiding, emotional figure; the precocious schoolgirl and semi-senile elder are more fractious and playful. It\u2019s a squabbling, warm, integrated 21st century nest.<\/p>\n

\"Anita<\/a>

Anita Hegh in The Wild Duck Photo (also top): Heidrun Lohr<\/p><\/div>\n

As a text, it\u2019s an immensely intelligent response to the original, but what Belvoir does is inseparable from how they do it. The lean script might suit microscope naturalism, but becomes a big-stage event. All but the very last scene take place inside a bare perspex box (design by Ralph Myers), starkly-lit, and with the actors miked. Sighs and stammers are amplified, intimacy held at bay. And we\u2019re there too. The audience is sharply reflected when the box goes dark between scenes. We\u2019re at a remove, yet implicated; not merely observers but observed in turn. We may think not only about what is happening between scenes, but about our own mess: the sex, lies and waterfowl, the hurtful things we\u2019ve concealed and revealed, or had revealed to us.<\/p>\n

Toril Moi\u2019s probing study of Ibsen suggests that The Wild Duck<\/em> is \u2018a disturbing meditation on the connection between the ways in which words lose their meaning and the ways in which we avoid love.\u2019 It was a shock to discover that this mostly a new cast (only Anita Hegh\u2019s brilliant Gina \u2013 a grounded woman losing the ground beneath her feet \u2013 and John Gaden\u2019s old Werle were in the original). I can\u2019t quite imagine other actors inhabiting these roles: a Hjalmar who is less of an over-eager, pulpy shambles than Cowell; a Gregers who is less of an uptight, invasive muppet than Wyllie. This Gregers is horribly fascinated by Hjalmar\u2019s family \u2013 does he long to destroy it or, creepier yet, reform it around himself? The queasy way he hangs around once damage has been done and ingratiates himself with Hedvig (superb Sara West) is equally suspect \u2013 the false signals she reads aren\u2019t merely wrong.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wandered out stunned, head down, chest tight. It\u2019s a cardiac evening<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been writing about the show\u2019s considerable brains, but that doesn\u2019t account for its clawing, scathing affect. I wandered out stunned, head down, chest tight. It\u2019s a cardiac evening. How do they achieve that? As well as the reflective set, the pacing is extraordinary. In the first section of the interval-less piece, short, sharp scenes end on the precipice of a bristling conversation, punctuated by urgent bursts of Bach in the blackout. As truth turns to torment, scenes bleed into each other under merciless fluorescent light, scrawling electric guitar replacing the Bach. It\u2019s a cruel rush of terrible; too fast, too furious for repair. No wonder you might end up ducking for cover.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belvoir Theatre’s Wild Duck Shall we start with the duck? Ibsen\u2019s stage directions keep the titular Wild Duck offstage. It remains a symbol of damage, or survival, or of secrecy long-subsumed. Well, pellets to that, because Belvoir Theatre from Sydney, whose lacerating 2011 production is at London\u2019s Barbican, give us plenty of chances to see […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[124,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-barbican","9":"tag-theatre","10":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1006"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1020,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1006\/revisions\/1020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}