RAIN, RAGE , REGRETS
If you’re expecting the original Ibsen tale of a bored wife wondering whether to leave a dull husband and deciding not to, pause. This is “after Ibsen” written and directed by Simon Stone. We sit around or above a big white shining rectangle, and it’s 2025: topical enough for a line or two about Just Stop Oil arrests. It’s Ullswater, where in an (invisible) lovely garden the neuroscientist Edward (Andrew LIncoln) has given a terminal diagnosis to the unbearably handsome young Heath (Joe Alwyn). The pair tiresomely exchange overeducated literary references. Theres a lake and pool in which the lady of the house Ellida (Alicia Vikander, this is star-casting time) swims while always wishing for the sea, where she used to throw herself into deep currents. Edward lost his first wife to suicide, mixes his own spices and rudely rejects the visiting Lyle’s gift of bottled sauces. He has two Tik-Tok-sassy teenage dauighters , initially insufferable but destined to be interesting towards the second half. Asa (Gracie Oddie-James, a headlong performer) is planning a PhD at Yale but meanwhile does OnlyFans soft porn; Hilda is becoming obsessed with the ripped glamour of young doomed Heath, and romantically imaging herself at his deathbed. It’s quite boring in the Lake District if you’re seventeen, apparently.
For some time, I have to confess, the whole family simply annoyed me: too much sitcom-streamer dialogue. Nor were a third of the lines fully audible: I have checked this with people 10, 20 and 45 years younger and all agreed it is a problem. Especially when the people at the far end of the stage from you are laughing because they were close enough to hear some muttered remark. And – retrospectively – it’s annoying because towards the end of the first half, and throughout the second, the characterization is better. Vikander is the least audible – a TV-mutterer in conversation and only clear in her late big speeches. Andrew Lincoln is the only one properly audible throughout, and indeed magnificent, a proper star turn in his raging confusion at the play goes on.
For it does warm up. First with a radio report on a past incident on an oil rig, sparking Elida”s unresolved memories of being an environmental activist at 15, in love with a man over twice her age, , accidentally killing someone on an oil rig and promising to wait for him always as he goes to prison. When the first half ends with the arrival of Brendan Cowell as a big hearty bearded Aussie, we know who it’ll be.
My friend the Ibsen-purist came to a late preview and disliked it, saying she’d rather people wrote their own plays not piggybacked on classics. And there is a case for tiring of these updates, whether ancient Greek or Ibsen and Strindberg: deprived of the anger at social norms which fuelled them, they often flail (remember in the Bridget Jones series how the endearingly silly heroine is pretentiously working on what she calls “Chekhov’s Hedda Gabler” , re-set in 21c Hampstead. Top satirical spot there from Helen Fielding).
So in Stone’s version, while a second wife’s past and a young man’s illness do reflect the cake Ibsen baked, he anxiously crams in through plot and character numerous fresher plums: from daddy ‘n daughter-issues and suicide to eco-activism, groupthink, underage sex, online porn, miscarriage-guilt and the social problems of rural racism seen through mixed race teenagers. Add the irresistible ability of the Bridge to do blasts of lightning and soak half the second act in real sluicing rain , which eventually fills a shallow pool convenient for apocalyptic sex, before deepening to a lap- pool around which an interminable reconciliation may or may not be completed.
So where it ought to build up to a climax it builds, drops away, builds a bit again, makes another oblique point, suddenly takes the trouble to mention Love Actually which made Andrew Lincoln famous, and finally ends with a plunge and a shriek after nearly 3 hours.
But yes, there are some excellent lines: Lincoln is superb when given a chance to go spectacularly nuts, Alwyn is peculiarly likeable and the teens – Oddie-James and Isobel Akuwudike – are terrific: at first infuriating but finally the source of those devastating young wisdoms we all encounter in times of adult chaos. As they clear the stage of garden furniture preparatory to the dramatic downpour, one remarks to their endlessly conflicted and tormented stepmother “Y’know, you don’t have to do things just because you can. I learned that when I was twelve”.
Bridgetheatre.co.uk to 8 nov
Rating 3
theatreCat 