Irish Times writers review The Wild Duck at the Peacock Theatre, Dublin, and The Importance of Being Earnest at the Gate Theatre, Dublin.
The Wild Duck
Peacock Theatre, Dublin
We live in an Ibsenist society. Phones are tapped in 1982 and Charles Haughey resigns as Taoiseach 10 years later. A priest abuses children in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and a government falls in 1994. A bishop fathers a child in the 1970s, and the authority of the church is destroyed in the 1990s. Another bishop resigns in 2002 because of the activities of an abusive priest, now dead, in the 1980s. Tribunals and inquiries tell us who we are now by uncovering the sins of the past.
This is the characteristic mode of Henrik Ibsen's realistic plays, and it was a smart idea to stage his 1884 tragic satire in the Peacock now, especially since this play is a far more subtle reflection on the relationship between the past and the present than more famous and more po-faced works, like The Pillars of the Community or Ghosts. For what makes The Wild Duck so richly intriguing is that the truth-teller Gregors Werle is not a hero, but a pompous, egotistical prig who destroys a reasonably happy family.
This production is all the more fascinating because it is shaped by an unusual triangle of sensibilities: a Norwegian play in a new version by an Irish playwright (Frank McGuinness), directed by a Hungarian (László Marton). The cocktail produces just the right mix of familiarity and strangeness; a clear, immediate drama that does not deny the play its essential oddity.
Things do not start well, however. The first act is not one of Ibsen's most gracious exercises in exposition. There is a vast back-story to be filled in through supposedly-natural dialogue. Haakon Werle and Old Ekdal were involved many years before in a scam involving the felling of trees on State property. Old Ekdal took the rap, went to jail and now lives as a menial part-time clerk. Werle was acquitted and is now a wealthy timber magnate and notorious womaniser. His son Gregors, already disgusted by his father's dirty money, discovers that Werle also married off his mistress Gina to Ekdal's weak and innocent son, Hjalmar.
Packing all of this information into the conversation at a dinner party stretches even Ibsen's facility for dialogue. The cramped spaces of Csorsz Khell's design for the first act and the rather uneasy playing of the cast make the whole thing even more stilted. Gregors's discovery and his decision to break with his father and reveal the truth to Hjalmar are curiously flat and the prospect of another four acts seems uninviting.
First impressions are deceptive, however. Khell's set for Hjalmar's photographic studio, where the rest of the action is set, is vastly better. The ensemble acting from Des Nealon as Old Ekdal, Denis Conway as Hjalmar, Andrea Irvine as his wife Gina, Judith Roddy as their young daughter Hedvig and Frank McCusker as Gregors, is flowing and sure-footed. Marton's low-key, unfussy direction, with its emphasis on crisp movement and clear storytelling, becomes steadily more impressive.
The assurance with which he and the cast plot the play's shifting moods, from sardonic satire to bitter comedy to horrible tragedy, makes for absorbing theatre.
It helps enormously that McGuinness has fashioned a text that is colloquial and fluent enough for contemporary Irish actors to speak with confidence, yet that also retains enough of the musty rhetoric that is so essential to Gregors's righteousness.
His mastery of different registers, from comic absurdity to deep despair, gives a richness of texture far beyond a standard translation.
However, there are a few odd mismatches between the text and the production. The book-keeper Graaberg is still referred to several times, even though he has been dropped from the cast of characters, which must be puzzling to anyone who has not read the play. And, while Marton has added a crucial piece of business with a pistol at the very end of the play, making Gregors take it with him, the text still has the pistol staying in the hand of the dead Hedvig.
In spite of these glitches and the poor first act, this is a captivating and unexpectedly enjoyable production of an oddly timely play. It will certainly tell you as much about truth, lies and scandals in two-and-a-half hours as the same period spent at a tribunal.
Fintan O'Toole
Runs until August 16th
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The Importance of Being Earnest
Gate Theatre, Dublin
Oscar Wilde's best play has much in common with an old jazz standard. So long as a production holds and builds on the basic creation, there's not a lot that can go wrong, and the music-language offers numerous opportunities for subtle improvisation to beguile the ear and intellect, so that the wit and commentary remain ever fresh.
The improvisations are largely vested in a sparkling array of individual performances woven into overall harmony by director Alan Stanford's clear empathy with the author. As the old saw has it, trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle. The casting of Robert O'Mahony, an actor of star quality, as the manservant, and of the excellent David O'Brien as the butler, emphasises the approach that there are no small roles here - and no small actors either.
There can, however, be a first among equals, and Susan Fitzgerald's performance is a delight that has been waiting to happen. To say this is not to qualify in any way a succession of triumphs spanning her early ingénues to a succession of major character interpretations, but rather, to emphasize the novelty and persuasive force of her Lady Bracknell. She is slight of stature, but booms with overbearing authority, getting inside the head of an arrogant but practical aristocrat who still knows the value of a pound. It is a majestic achievement.
As her daughter Gwendolen, Fiona O'Shaughnessy looks and sounds like a Lady B. in waiting, and one pities the poor suitor going to his personal guillotine. She is matched by Jade Yourell's Cecily, a sister under the skin. Declan Conlon and Alan Smyth, as Jack and Algernon, are the benighted men who have plighted their troth to the girls, occupying their tumbrels with style and misplaced dignity.
That leaves Sean Kearns as the bumbling Canon Chasuble, and the hugely entertaining Lynn Cahill as the burbling Miss Prism, who snares him as her reward for creating the maze of misunderstandings in the first place. They all combine to make beautiful music, leaving a melody that lingers on. Lovely.
Gerry Colgan
Runs until September 20th
