Wild Duck flies

THE WILD DUCK
Donmar Warehouse by CHLOE JAMES

THE Wild Duck, which many critics consider Ibsen’s masterpiece, recounts the fatal effects of what Ibsen termed the “life-lie,” the delusions man requires to flee a reality too difficult to bear.
Michael Grandage’s new production, complete with immaculate cast, has only a few weeks to go, but is still playing to sell-out crowds.
In The Wild Duck, Ben Daniels makes a strong, quietly unsettling, impression as Gregers Werle, a neo-con zealot on a mad mission and visitor from hell.
Ibsen’s emotional totalitarian sets out to free an old school friend from the lies that have sustained his happy home life, but what follows is the suicide of the 14-year-old daughter, Hedvig (Sinead Matthews).
As the persisting mental image of the same actor in the neo-con role helps to underline, now is an opportune moment to remind people of the wisdom of this insight.
Daniels’ excellent Gregers is wrapped in brooding loneliness. The character seizes on the convalescent wild duck in the attic as a symbol of his friend’s refusal to confront reality. He is no simple villain, a victim of heredity and a man who believes in what he calls “the claims of the ideal.
Paul Hilton’s Hjalmar is a man capable of being distracted from grand gestures such as leaving home by the lure of creature comforts.
The mood of the piece is well-served by this performance and by the sad, abashed crankiness of Peter Eyre’s Old Ekdal and the refreshingly crusty realism of Nicholas le Prevost’s Relling, the disreputable doctor, who recognises most people need a “life-lie” in order to survive.
Catch it if you can.
Until February 18
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