The Lady from the Sea

Simon Stone’s knack for updating theater classics is here accompanied by Lizzie Clachan’s spectacularly aquatic set design. For the first half of the play, the set is bright white and punctuated with playful banter, with any storm clouds seemingly held at bay. When the audience returns from the intermission however, the heavens open and drench the stage, now tainted solid black, before the stage itself gives way to the watery depths. On a stage without walls, with audience seating circling all sides and angles, the rain and then the pool function as multiple fourth walls, allowing characters to remain oblivious to scenes taking place in plain sight mere meters away on the same round-about stage. With a soundtrack playing a wistful rendition of “Let Me Drown,” the characters are literally swept away by their grief and yearnings as questions of time and age slip above and below the surface. The water creates a material portal between periods – Ibsen’s and our’s, revealing how fluid, violent, and yet fragile opposing perspectives can be: the invisible infinity that separates acts and intentions, constraint and consent. In Stone’s version, the sea that for Ibsen lay claim to the female protagonist now engulfs the principal male character who disappears under the surface on an isolated stage, followed by the entire theater also being suddenly plunged into complete darkness and silence. After an uncomfortable duration in which audience members are beginning to think the play has ended, a spotlight hits the water as Edward breaks through the surface with a loud cry, emphatically propelled from the water for a majestic second until the lights go out again, this time to immediate and thunderous applause.    – A. Street