The Wild Duck

Two of the nation’s favourite young thesps reunite for Simon Stone’s deconstruction of an Ibsen fable

First published on 7 Nov 2011. Updated on 3 Oct 2012.

This event has finished

Henrik Ibsen's The Wild Duck is a warning on the perils of truth-telling. It revolves around the Ekdal family and the arrival of family friend Gregers Werle, an idealistic soul who believes in always telling the truth – even at the cost of the happiness of the Ekdal family. Ultimately, Gregers' rampant honesty leads to a number of shattered lives.

Adaptor/director Simon Stone has put this single tragic event at the centre of his production. "I'm looking at the same characters and actions from a different point of view," he says. "I wanted to propose exactly the opposite [of Ibsen]: suicide is an enigmatic, confusing, awful, tragic thing that happens that we will never be able to understand – and therefore we can't actually blame anyone. You see the same event five times from everyone's point of view, so there isn't the objective narrative of the original – just a confusing quagmire of potential reasons."

Ewen Leslie and Toby Schmitz interview