LITTLE EYOLF. To 12 February.
London
LITTLE EYOLF
by Henrik Ibsen translated and adapted by Terje Tveit
Riverside Studios (Studio 3) To 12 February 2006
Tue-Sat 8pm Sun 6pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Pre-show talks 6.30pm 25 Jan, 1 Feb
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
TICKETS: 020 8237 1111
www.riversidestudios.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 January
Poetic, intensely-detailed production that takes rarely-seen Ibsen out of the realistic frame.
Just 3 months after Terje Tveit’s production for Dale Teater Kompani of Ibsen’s early, expansive Peer Gynt, covering decades and continents with a 14-strong ensemble, it’s fascinating to see his account of the much later (1894), extremely compact Little Eyolf. There are 6 characters, but the builder Borkheim who loves Asta Allmers merely contrasts the intense family relationships, while the briefly seen rat-Wife is a folklore figure, a mixture of Pied Piper and siren.
The intense relationships lie between the three adult Allmers, giving this play its Freudian landscape. All Allmers have a first-name beginning with a vowel; if Asta had been a boy she’s have been called Eyolf and the blurring between her and the son of Alfred and his consonantal wife Rita strikes repeatedly.
Directing in his non–realistic ensemble style, Tveit loses the claustrophobia of a living-room and the sheer everydayness of the Allmers’ agonised marriage. The abstract setting can make the dialogue seem abstract also. But the gains are immense in unlocking Eyolf’s modernity and Ibsen’s astonishing psychological acuity.
Alfred doubly denies life: in his marriage to Sarah Head’s black-clad Rita, almost always tense and anguished - they look away from each other whenever they talk. And in seeing Eyolf only as a vessel to continue his great literary project. Loose manuscript pages are stored in a huge suitcase kept central stage, till Alfred stuffs it under a mini-bridge, scenic echo of the lake where Eyolf (already crippled at a moment of parental neglect) drowns.
Almost mockingly, using the kind of revelation he despised in 19th-century boulevard dramatists, Ibsen reveals Asta and Alfred are not blood-relatives. There’s been no doubt where true passion lies; Alfred may be too obsessed with his self-image to realise but Vaborg Froysnes’ patient, resignedly pained yet loving Asta is more self-aware.
Thematically choreographed, with Head especially showing the pain of a strangled relationship, with crippled Eyolf viewing people through his crutch and Rosalind Stiockwell’s quietly sinister Rat-Wife ever-present, this production needs careful following but shows Little Eyolf in its full depth, picking up themes running through Ibsen’s earlier, more famous dramas.
Eyolf: Shane Armstrong
Borgheim: Stephen Doran
Asta Allmers: Vaborg Froysnes
Alfred Allmers: Edward Fulton
Rita Allmers: Sarah Head
Rat-Wife: Roalind Stockwell
Director: Terje Tveit
Lighting: Finnuala McNulty
2006-01-26 11:27:14