THE WILD DUCK TAKES FLIGHT:
TRUTH, LIES AND QUACKING DELUSIONS

While Shakespeare agonized over “to be or not to be,” Henrik Ibsen was more concerned with “why is everyone being so fake?” It’s existential dread versus emotional fraud, and I thought of these two drama kings because The Wild Duck, Ibsen’s play on delusion and denial, has just landed at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. This fresh version, adapted by David Eldridge and brought vividly to life by Simon Godwin, is a co-production of Theatre for a New Audience and Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Maaike Laanstra-Corn as Hedvig, David Patrick Kelly as Old Ekdal, Nick Westrate
as Hjalmar Ekdal, Melanie Field as Gina Ekdal, Alexander Hurt as Gregers Werle

Bring tissues because in Ibsen’s world happiness does not exist, truth causes disasters, wild ducks are metaphors for our emotional instability, and secrets are stage bombs. The Norwegian “Father of Modern Drama” domesticated tragedy, setting it in a middle-class household where the stakes are emotional and existential, not political or dynastic. There is no obvious “villain,” no clear “hero,” just a network of flawed, deeply human characters, each contributing to the unraveling of a family’s fragile world, the Ekdals.

Alexander Hurt, Nick Westrate

We are in Norway, in the lavish home of industrialist Håkon Werle (a slick, nonchalant Robert Stanton), who is throwing a party. Crashing the soirée is his long-estranged son, Gregers Werle (Alexander Hurt), who storms in like a walking social media thread of moral absolutism, armed with a smirk and a grudge, ready to sniff out hypocrisy like a bloodhound. It’s his first return in 15 years, and he has judgments to spare. At the party, he meets his old schoolmate Hjalmar Ekdal (Nick Westrate) who is now a struggling photographer. In a moment of spectacularly poor judgment, Hjalmar invites Gregers to stay at his modest home, opening the door to chaos.

Maaike Laanstra-Corn, Melanie Field

There, Ekdal lives a seemingly happy life with his sweet wife Gina (Melanie Field), their daughter Hedvig (Maaike Laanstra-Corn), and Hjalmar’s father, Old Ekdal (the ever-compelling David Patrick Kelly), a former military man and famous hunter who fell from grace thanks to Håkon Werle. He now lives in a fantasy world, hunting pigeons and rabbits in a makeshift attic forest. His most treasured companion is a wounded wild duck who waddles through the play as a glorious metaphor for all wounded souls hiding from reality. Envying the quiet stability of his old friend’s life, Gregers hatches a brilliant plan: destroy it in the name of truth.

Nick Westrate, Maaike Laanstra-Corn

Westrate, as Hjalmar, is a delight, cosplaying as a brilliant inventor while mostly napping, moping, and monologuing. His petty complaints are hilarious until he pivots to raw heartbreak and leaves the audience sighing. Melanie Field’s Gina feels almost plucked from the pages of a 19th-century novel, ever so practical, grounded, and silently heroic. She keeps the household (and her husband photography “business”) running while politely ignoring the growing storm, and her authenticity never slips. Maaike Laanstra-Corn brings a tender, luminous energy to Hedvig, the nearly blind daughter whose fierce love for her family (and the duck) is both joyful and heartbreaking. And Alexander Hurt’s Gregers simmers with righteous fury, a man on a mission to ruin a perfectly good lie in the name of truth. You will love to hate him because he nails it.

Melanie Field, Nick Westrate

As the beacon of moral clarity, Gregers points out to the colorful figures in his orbit that Gina might have had a thing with his father just before marrying Hjalmar, but no one is being sufficiently dramatic about it. Mrs. Sørby (played with savvy warmth by Mahira Kakkar), Werle’s fiancée, doesn’t care. The philosophically inebriated Dr. Relling and the pompous Captain Balle (both played with gusto by the versatile Matthew Saldivar), the bureaucratic Mr. Flor (Bobby Plasencia), the charming servant Pettersen (Katie Broad), the enigmatic Jensen (Alexander Sovronsky), and even Gregers’ own father seem to agree that sometimes illusions are what keep people alive.

David Patrick Kelly

Scenic designer Andrew Boyce created the Ekdal family’s modest loft with just a few well-chosen details. Most strikingly, a towering skylight lets light pour in and moods shift from stormy gloom to hopeful dawn (with the help of Stacey Derosier’s accurate lighting design.) Heather C. Freedman’s costumes elegantly root us in the period while signaling each character’s place in the social and emotional pecking order. Darron L. West’s sound design hums along with precision, never overstating but always supporting, while music director Alexander Sovronsky, violin in hand, becomes a kind of ghostly narrator, elegantly smoothing transitions and transporting us, note by note, back to the 19th century.

Mahira Kakkar as Mrs Sørby

In the past year, I saw and reviewed Simon Godwin’s All the Devils Are Here with Patrick Page and Macbeth with Ralph Fiennes, both powerful takes on classic texts. So when I have heard he was tackling The Wild Duck, I was instantly curious. Godwin is a director who makes old plays feel urgent and alive with elegance and precision. But, even when The Wild Duck premiered in Bergen, Norway, in 1885, audiences and critics were perplexed; they were expecting a clear moral message like in An Enemy of the People, not a psychological and existential drama. Instead, the play became a classic, a hidden gem, and Godwin makes it shine again.

Alexander Hurt, Robert Stanton

Ibsen was not interested in neat endings or moral takeaways. His plays came along just as early psychologists like Charcot and Janet were starting to poke around the human mind, and literature was getting messier, more personal, and way more interesting. In The Wild Duck, Ibsen dared to suggest that maybe truth isn’t always liberating. Dr. Relling’s line, “If you take the life-lie away from the average man, you take away his happiness as well,” pretty much says it all. Ibsen wrote it as the world was slowly going toward World War I, surrounded by fake news, bumbling authoritarians, collapsing illusions, and geopolitical drama. Sounds familiar? You will laugh, you will sigh, and you might even have a short but meaningful existential crisis. Just don’t miss it.

Nick Westrate

photos by Hollis King and Gerry Goodstein

The Wild Duck
Theatre for a New Audience
co-production with Shakespeare Theatre Company
Polonsky Shakespeare Center, 262 Ashland Pl. in Brooklyn
for tickets ($20-$125), call 646.553.3880 or visit TFANA