Theat re
Haunting
Peter Jenkins
The Lady From The Sea (Royal Exchange, Manchester) IvanOv (Old Vic) An exceptional actress is needed to anchor The Lady From The Sea in the depths of Elhda's subconscious. Vanessa Redgrave is a quite exceptional actress and her performance in the round theatre which today stands inside Manchester's old Royal Exchange is one of those truly great ones Which will be remembered over the years. For this play to work we, the audience, have to be as fascinated by Ellida as she is by the sea from whence, they say, she came; her disturbed being has to haunt the stage while the otherwise somewhat-mechanical subplots are played out; and whenever we hear the sound of the sea, the wailing of gulls (or trolls?) and the moaning of whales, we must feel her presence. The story, you may remember, is based on a yarn which Ibsen heard one year in Molde concerning a seaman presumed drowned who returned to find his wife married to another man. Ellida is the second wife of Dr Wangel and stepmother to his daughters, Bolette and Hilde. For three Years, since the cot death (or so we would now call it) of her own child, she has been disturbed, a stranger to herself, her husband and her family — living a life in which the Others have no part. She tells this to Arnholm who is Bolette's old (in fact he's in his thirties) tutor and who has been sumnioned back to help the family in its troubles. His courtship of Bolette is sub-plot number one. Also on hand is a terminally consumptive young man, a would be sculptor, who apart from serving as the object of the adolescent Hilde's ruthless romantic urgings (sub-plot number two), tells Mrs Wangel a sailor's yarn about a shipwreck and a jilted seaman who swears he will return to take his revenge. Lynstrand, which is the young sculptor's name, Imagines this man returning from the sea, even though drowned, to revenge himself upon the faithless wife. She, of course, is Ellida, the lighthouse keeper's daughter, who as a girl had developed a wild passion for such a mysterious figure, a Finn passing under an American name, the alleged murderer of his captain and last seen heading in the direction of the Arctic. Together they had contracted a symbolic form of marriage witnessed only by the sea. As soon as this tale is told, which is early In Act One, we know what is going to happen. The drama takes place in Ellida's mind. Will she answer the call of the returning Stranger, the call of the sea? Redgrave, from the moment she runs onto the stage, wrapped in a bath towel, hair all dripping, is a bundle of nerves, someone plainly possessed by devil or troll or — as we would more likely say — experiencing a nervous breakdown. She communicates all of this and a great deal more within moments of her first entrance as she fidgets with the former family tutor Arnholm. She wonders is she ill or — tongue darting out to wet lips — mad?
All through the play her face, twitching with anxiety and pitifully pleading for help, is a case history in itself and her neurotic fingers provide a running commentary on her tortured inner state. Whenever she is on stage the intensity of her interest in the lines spoken by ethers, the vivacity of her reactions and the brilliant speed of her responses carry the play forward and give it form and point; and yet never does she play the star, upstage or allow herself to become actressy; she shows what a range of tone can be encompassed within small changes in volume and the beauty of her speech is flattered by the softness and the lightness of her delivery. You will know the woman Ellida for ever when you have seen Redgrave in this performance of genius.
The Lady From The Sea is a wholly emotional and psychological drama. It contains no social or political material which is one reason why it has dated less than, say, Rosmersholm which preceded it. Another reason is that it does not depend on the earnest moral reformism which makes Ibsen seem so old-fashioned these days.
True we have to suffer Dr Wangel's heavyhanded rubbing in of the moral of the story (freedom alone permits responsibility) which brings the play dangerously close to ending as an improving tear-jerker; but Michael Elliot's direction appeared to be based on William Archer's view which was that Ellida's Stranger is a woman's fantasy. Certainly this, is the most acceptable modern reading of the play (which contains abundant hints of mental illness) and Redgrave, in a quite brilliant scene, gives first the impression of a person mentally drowning as she clings in desperation to her husband while the demonic power of the Stranger draws her towards the depths of her imaginings and then, in a marvellous moment, of a person exorcised, as she finds she can slowly turn her head to face and finally to reject him. A strong supporting cast rises to Redgrave's great performance. Lynsey Baxter brought out the cruelty of youth contained in Hilde and Christopher Good as Lynstrand told the crucial yarn most beautifully. Graham Crowden was so ponderously and good-naturedly bemused as Dr Wangel that at times he seemed more like Dr Watson but that is a minor criticism of a wonderful production. Meanwhile the Prospect Theatre Company, a worthy outfit, has returned from tour for another season at the Old Vic. I missed the opening of Ivanov, one of my favourite plays, in August and so caught up with it last week. The Prospect deserves the support of Londoners (it receives Arts Council aid while out in the sticks but none in London) but the first thing they should do is to buy Derek Jacobi a ticket to Manchester to learn from Vanessa Redgrave the difference between acting and shouting. This was by far the noisiest production of Chekhov I have ever seen and quite inappropriate for Ivanor which is a study of depression. Ivanov keeps saying things like, `I haven't the strength to walk to that door,' and `If only you knew how tired you make me,' whereas, as is plain to see, the chief explanation for this is the energy expended by Jacobi on shouting and prancing. There is no excuse for this rudely overacted production for Chekhov, in a letter, left clear instructions about what he had in mind. The point about Ivanov is that although he's ostensibly a man who ought to be denounced in the Sunday papers for his heartless behaviour, we have to prefer him to Lvov, the self-righteous doctor, also played rather noisily by Clive Arrindell. For the play to work in this way, first, we have to see enough of the man Ivanov once was (we hear of it from Anna) in order to understand the tragedy of his decline and, second, we have to be able to identify with his depression, the condition which has tragically reduced him to the verge of moral irresponsibility. Chekhov gives no explanation of this, and least of all a justification, beyond the fact that Ivanov is Russian, the meaning of which he tries to explain in his letter. Russian excitability has one specific property, he write's there. 'It soon gives way to fatigue.' Not with Jacobi it doesn't; it was who left exhausted — and disappointed.
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