STC’s ‘Wild Duck’ Takes Audiences on a Flight of Feeling
Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck is not among his most frequently staged works in the United States, so the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s current revival, directed by artistic director Simon Godwin (in an adaptation by David Eldridge), offers Washington audiences a very rare opportunity to encounter one of the playwright’s most psychologically intricate dramas.
The result is an intelligent production — but a haunting evening.
First produced in 1884, Ibsen’s The Wild Duck trades political fireworks for domestic fuses. The play follows Gregers Werle, the earnest, eccentric son of a wealthy businessman, who returns home on a mission to strip away the illusions that sustain his old friend Hjalmar Ekdal’s family. His noble intentions (truth, transparency, and moral triumph) soon tip toward tragedy, proving that sometimes honesty is not the best policy.
“The battle for moral certainty,” as Godwin has noted, “always has casualties,” and this production places that idea squarely at its center.
What’s most fascinating about this rare staging is that the moral quandaries in this play could just as easily play out in a Dupont Circle dining room as in a Norwegian parlor.
The plot showcases both domestic warmth and emotional fragility, like a snow globe just waiting to be shaken. And caught in the storm stands Hedvig, Hjalmar’s sensitive young daughter, whose bond with her pet wild duck becomes the play’s most haunting symbol of innocence wounded by adult delusion.
The performances are uniformly engaging. Nick Westrate’s Hjalmar is all bluster and heartbreak, a dreamer drowning in self-regard. Alexander Hurt’s Gregers has the steely conviction of a man who’s never doubted his own virtue — a dangerous quality in any century. Melanie Field as Gina, the family’s unacknowledged realist, gives the play its moral ballast, while Maaike Laanstra-Corn’s Hedvig is a study in quiet devastation. Her scenes, particularly those involving the titular duck, that symbol of wounded innocence, are tender without tipping into sentimentality.
Together, the ensemble finds a rhythm that feels both classic and contemporary, and their uneasy chemistry sparks the play’s central question: when is truth truly kind, and when is it cruelty in disguise?
All in all, this Duck doesn’t waddle. It soars. Gracefully, sometimes gloomily, through Ibsen’s intricate terrain of truth, illusion, and family secrets. Godwin’s staging is a stylish study in how honesty can wound as much as it heals. The production opens with quiet confidence and grows in force until its final, heartbreaking moments; proof that restraint can be as riveting as revelation.
Running time: about 2 hours 30 minutes, including one intermission.
At: Klein Theatre, 450 7th St. NW, through November 16.
Tickets: from $39, shakespearetheatre.org