Lady from the sea

Yes, "in a new version by Elinor Cook" is clearly stated on all the posters and publicity material

eg



Anyway, we can debate this all we want but none of us knew Ibsen. I'm waiting for the definitive word from Jan Brock as I believe they were at school together.

In general I am in favour of updated settings, in fact for Shakespeare I think they are usually essential, but I have never seen an Ibsen update which improves on the original. For Ibsen you just need to set it in the time/place specified by Ibsen, then the director has two tasks: casting and directing the actors. Of these I think casting is by far the most important. The great productions of Ibsen I have seen follow this template, Nunn/Almeida Lady from the Sea, Grandage/Donmar Wild Duck, Eyre/NT John Gabriel Borkman and several others. Sometimes an updating does no particular damage to the play but doesn't really add much either, van Hove/NT Hedda Gabler, Jones/Young Vic Enemy of the People (the latter quite widely disliked here though).

If the update significantly changes the plot or themes of the play then I think the intellectually honest approach is to change the name of the play as in the NT “Mrs Affleck, based on Ibsen’s Little Eyolf” then everyone is happy (except for those of us who saw that terrible production of course).

I think here the plot and intentions of the play are followed fairly closely so I am OK with the billing the Donmar is using. However, the version is far inferior to the original in some ways. Just as one example, the play is intentionally set in a small, remote, claustrophobic Northern Norwegian town. Setting it in a Carribean holiday resort with visiting Hollywood actors is just idiotic – it removes some of the motivation for many of the characters to escape from there. And the 1950’s setting isn’t used to make any point at all – simply an excuse to dress the daughters in vintage swimming costumes.

There are other problems. The set (by the often good Tom Scutt) is laughably amateurish, like a school art project, and distracting. The casting is all wrong for most of the parts (only the two daughters are well cast). The acting is uncertain at best. And the direction is woefully poor with no control at all over the tone of the play as it is allowed to randomly veer from melodrama to domestic comedy via all points in between.

This is a real drop in quality from the Donmar.

Agree with the above.

The fish tank annoyed me particularly, as it seemed to want to be a metaphor for the freedom of the sea, and the mysteriousness and turbulence of identity, with people getting freer when they jumped in, and less free when they jumped out, but which, literally being a FISH TANK, represents the opposite of freedom! Even the idea of such a rigid quotidian object, as a fish tank, standing in for Ibsen's unclassifiable unknowable roiling turbulence of the self and sea, seemed ridiculous full stop.

There was one good thing about that fish tank, which was the shadows of rippling water it cast on the walls, the suggestive mystery of shimmering colours transforming the patchy white paint of the set into something wonderful. That was one redeeming feature.

Nikki Amuka Bird's performance is like that fish tank. She has always been good at playing the rigid boxiness of modern civilisation, a cold fish affecting warmth. But asked to project a wild dynamic inner core, as Ibsen asks, she can't get close. Like the fish tank, she's too self-contained.

I agree with Ryan that Jonny Holden and Tom McKay nailed their parts. I also loved Finbar Lynch's solid warm decency, trying to be tether Amuka Bird's would-be wild bird, an [Amuka] Bird unfortunately already too tame.

Ellie Bamber, by contrast, was wild. Her flighty Hilde Wangel could easily slide straight into Ibsen's sequel, for her character, "The Masterbuilder," and really soar! I'd see that!

For me, this was a restrained and contained: 3 stars.

.. and the daughters were going to a party on the Hollywood star's yacht. 

I have a special fondness for this play having seen both Vanessa Redgrave and Natasha Richardson in it over the years. But what I saw yesterday was just plain bad. Elinor Cook's version of the play is bizarre. Why move the setting to Jamaica and keep the Norwegian names? And why of why, keep the language stilted and unnatural so that it sounds like a direct translation? The design is, and I rarely say this, is downright stupid. It doesn't illuminate the play, it doesn't evoke any period or time or place, in fact - it doesn't do anything. It could just as easily be the setting for the opening scene of 12th Night or the musical Titanic. What a botch! Nikki Annuka Bird is a good actress but lacks the appropriate mystery and other-worldliness for the part and the supporting cast around her are not up to her level. One simply wonders what inspired this production? Was it for Nikki? Was it a passion project for Kwame? or was it a funding initiative for the Donmar to involve minority creatives ? No matter what it was, it was bad. The Donmar has been through a bad period of late, I'm more hopeful about it's next three productions but right now it's in danger of entering Royal Court territory in terms of play selection and irrelevancy.