STAGE REVIEW : An Earthbound ‘Wild Duck’ at Los Angeles Theatre Center

It was H.L. Mencken’s stated conviction that Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen didn’t deal in extraordinary thoughts, just obvious ones “. . . ideas of the utmost simplicity,” he insisted. “There is nothing mysterious in them; there is not even anything new in them. Above all, there is no idiotic symbolism in them. They mean just what they say.”

Director Stein Winge appears to think so too. His staging of Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck,” which opened Wednesday at the Los Angeles Theatre Center, is straightforward, at least by Winge standards, which, in the past at LATC (“The Three Sisters,” “Barabbas,” “King Lear,” “The Glass Menagerie,” “The Inspector General”), have run the gamut from eclectic to eccentric.

Not this time. This morality tale about the harmfulness of unvarnished truth is performed without hidden agenda. No embellishments, no untoward fuss. That should have been a plus in a well-made play that needs above all simply to be seen and heard. But something of this “Wild Duck” is surprisingly tame. Like its wounded namesake, it hovers but it does not fly.

The reasons are subtle and various. Winge, who is the artistic director of the National Theatre of Norway in Oslo, has made strange choices in the casting of this play. Some work and some don’t.

In addition, Pavel Dobrusky’s uncommonly clumsy set is the production’s singular indulgence. Designed more for effect than functionality, it is hung in ungainly drapes for Mr. Werle’s mansion in scene one, then stripped down to reveal tall, vertical boards and graduated doors framing the Ekdals’ apartment. Effect is fine if it meets basic logic, but when old Ekdal (Stefan Gierasch) enters a room by crouching under a curtain in the opening scene, and when the relatively deep Bradley Theatre stage is needlessly reduced to something like a furnished landing strip for the rest of the play, effect parts company with sense.

Pervasive clarity would have sufficed to show the fallout between the spineless Hjalmar Ekdal (David Morse) and his former school-chum Gregers Werle (Anthony Geary), as Gregers forces Hjalmar to face devastating truths.

Because the Werles and the Ekdals are inextricably bound by a delicate network of lies.

Old Mr. Werle (Thomas Newman), Gregers’ father, had been in business with Hjalmar’s father, once a high-ranking army officer. Their ways parted when old Ekdal came under an ethical cloud, losing everything and doing time in jail. Now the eccentric old man does occasional bookkeeping for Werle, who overpays him to do it.

Is this unencumbered charity?

Hjalmar thinks it is. After all, old Werle also helped make it possible for Hjalmar to marry his wife Gina (Camilla Carr), a former maid in the Werle household, and set them up in a photography business. But Gregers, who knows his father well, figures out that Hjalmar, Gina, their daughter Hedvig (Mary Dixie Carter) and old Ekdal owe that father far less than they think--and points out a few things. The truth does not set them free.

Morse gives the production’s best performance as a pompous chauvinist with neither guts nor brains, perpetually striking poses of self-pity. Carr has the requisite toughness of a wife who married knowing that her marriage was based on a lie, but willing to make a serious go of it. She is a lot more honorable than Hjalmar in her commitment, but when the performance needs to show vulnerability at the end, it doesn’t quite come through.

Newman as old Werle and Sharon Barr as his mistress, Mrs. Sorby, are predictable and mannered. Gierasch makes the mistake of playing his eccentricities, which tends to diminish them. Ron Campbell is pretty much wasted in a minor role as a drunken theologian (double meaning intended). And even Geary’s Gregers suffers from a certain stiffness that rarely unbends enough to show us his humanity. He may be misguided, but not inhuman in his erring.

The play’s pleasantest surprises are Shabaka’s Relling, Ibsen’s voice of reason, and Carter’s delicate, eager and unself-pitying Hedvig. The latter is a real find, all pink and fresh and ingenuous. Shabaka cuts an unlikely figure as the down-and-out doctor on the skids who, nevertheless, has his moral priorities straight and knows the value of a lie in the sustenance of life. He makes it pay off.

Would the production had a similar pay-off. Oddly, it feels as if director Winge never quite got a handle on his Victorian countrymen. One can’t blame the lively and almost colloquial translation by Gerry Bamman and Irene B. Berman. It livens up the Ibsen characters, if not the circumstances of their lives.

Ibsen’s ideas in this play are fascinating, but dated and less than subtle. The symbolism of the wild duck, a wounded bird living in the Ekdal attic used as a game preserve by Hjalmar and old Ekdal, is more than self-explanatory. The characters pummel the audience with its meaning--a pounding this director and this cast have not yet found a way to soften.

At 514 S. Spring St., Tuesdays through Sundays, 8 p.m., with matinees Saturdays and Sundays at 2. Ends Aug. 12. $22-$27; (213) 627-5599).

‘THE WILD DUCK’

Revival of the Henrik Ibsen play in a new translation by Gerry Bamman and Irene B. Berman. Director Stein Winge. Sets and costumes Pavel Dobrusky. Lights Douglas D. Smith. Music Jan Garbarek. Sound Jon Gottlieb. Hair Jeffrey Sacino. Stage manager Danny Lewin. Cast Thomas Newman, Anthony Geary, Stefan Gierasch, David Morse, Camilla Carr, Mary Dixie Carter, Sharon Barr, Shabaka, Ron Campbell, Lou Robb, Geoff Hoff, Pilip Irwin, Mark Laska, Timothy Omundson.