Fjord focus on nature and relationships

The Lady from the Sea, Royal Exchange, Manchester
Claustrophobic small-town life is a common subject for playwrights, but Henrik Ibsen also added the confines of a fjord in Norway where the last boats leave at the end of summer, and residents are trapped both by geography and by the permanently dark days of winter.

In this confined community the local doctor, Wangel, a widower, has married a much younger woman, Ellida, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter with a yearning for the open sea.

She is scarcely much older then his two daughters, and the gulf between them all is becoming as deep as the fjord which traps them all in their small town.

Ibsen weaves a mystical tale around them, about the difficulty of forging bonds and friendships in love and marriage, and his play is also a comment on the effect the difficult geography of Norway also has upon the national psyche.

Director Sarah Frankcom and adapter David Eldridge have managed to inject flashes of humour which relieve some of the bleaker moments, especially in Hilde, played by Catrin Stewart, as a mischievous and at times attention-seeking teenager, put out by her father’s marriage to her young step-mother.

And Jonathan Keeble as the girls’ former tutor Arnholm lends the right amount of pompous formality which can be punctured by a quip or a double meaning to show the gentle human being beneath.

Reece Dinsdale, last seen in “Coronation Street” as Joe McIntyre, yet another doomed suitor for Gail Platt, is the re-married Dr Wangel, while Bill Ward, who was also the Street’s Mr Nasty, Charlie Stubbs, is the stranger who challenges him for the affections of Ellida (Neve McIntosh).

The sea is suggested in sound and light in this production, yet seems strangely absent most of the time, considering its pivotal role in the plot.

But this rarely performed Ibsen play is not only interesting for its revelations for life at the edge of 19th century civilisation, but also on a more philosophical plane.