On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month in 1918, a treaty signed in a railroad car in France marked the beginning of the end of World War 1. In Europe, November 11th is marked as Armistice Day while here in the US we commemorate the veterans that have defended our country in every war since that historic moment over one hundred years ago. On this day perhaps more than any other, we’re reminded that conflict is an indelible part of our shared DNA. This month’s column looks to theater that explores conflict and its consequences.
In the Spotlight
The Wild Duck, Shakespeare Theatre Company
Showing October 18 – November 16
www.shakespearetheatre.org
F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that “Family quarrels are bitter things” that are more akin to splits in the skin than wounds because they take much longer to heal. Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s rarely produced play The Wild Duck vividly captures this unique aspect of familial conflict and its unintended consequences, with David Eldridge’s adaptation directed by Shakespeare Theatre Company’s artistic director Simon Godwin being a particularly searing portrayal of the hurt inflicted by those who love you the most.
The Wild Duck was written by Ibsen in 1884 during his 30-year exile in Rome while Norway was being rent asunder by political and social strife. It’s set in a 19th century Norwegian town and is populated by characters Ibsen based on either his direct relatives or the Pauses, a noble scion of Ibsen’s family from Norway’s Upper Telemark region. Between the sumptuous setting of the wealthy Werle home and the Ekdal’s humble abode, we are introduced to two families whose histories are intertwined in ways that the audience gradually learns are more complicated – and combustible – than they initially appear. Gregers Werle (played by Alex Hurt in his STC debut) is the older Werle’s only son and sole heir. His tenuous relationship with his father Håkon (Robert Stanton) spills over into his friendship with Hjalmar Ekdal, the son of Håkon Werle’s old business partner, whose life will change forever when an explosive and deadly secret is revealed.
Eldridge’s adaptation of The Wild Duck is fresh off a September run at New York’s Theatre for a New Audience, where it garnered rave reviews. With a cast that includes Nick Westrate as the melancholic Hjalmar Ekdal, Melanie Field as his long-suffering wife Gina and exceptional lighting, music and scenic design by Stacey Derosier, Alexander Sovronsky and Andrew Boyce, it’s not hard to see why the play’s visceral sense of creeping dread has affected theatregoers and critics so profoundly. Ibsen’s play is at once darkly brooding and tragically comedic. Ostensibly a meditation on the mistakes that men make and the Freudian obsession with the father-figure (Ibsen modelled the character of Old Ekdal on his own father Knud), Eldridge and Godwin’s version gives plenty of expressive space to Ibsen’s female characters. Maaike Laanstra-Corn is exceptional as Hjalmar and Gina’s daughter Hedvig, whose failing eyesight means her whole world is narrowed down to the small photographic studio she shares with her parents, a couple of drunken lodgers and an injured wild duck that she dotes on obsessively. Hedvig’s innocent vulnerability (mirrored by the eponymous wild duck) is the counterfoil to Gregers Werle, who with “chronic righteousness” sets about dissecting the Ekdal’s meticulously assembled life with scalpel-like precision and an icy detachment.
The Wild Duck’s overarching theme of conflict (both internal and external) jostles with those of willful and accidental blindness, the burden of truth and the benefits of a lie in a play that manages to be simultaneously compact and expansive. You’re guaranteed to leave the theater with a lot to think about after the curtain drops.
Special Mention In Flanders Fields, Alliance for New Music-Theatre
Showing November 11
www.newmusictheatre.org
On Armistice Day, John and Elizabeth Chapman invite you into their home and back in time to 1917 to remember their son Victor, the very first American aviator to perish in what later became known as the Great War. This immersive, salon-style performance by the Alliance for New Music-Theatre is named after the titular 1915 poem by Canadian poet and soldier John McCrae and will take place at the Arts Club of Washington’s historic Monroe House. John Boulanger (Caesar, The Man Ray Project: Caesar and the Mannequin) plays John Jay Chapman, alongside Cara Schaefer as Elizabeth Astor Chapman and Alan Naylor as Victor Chapman.
“The project really began back in 2017,” Boulanger explains, referring to the first incarnation of In Flanders Fields at The President Woodrow Wilson House in April eight years ago to commemorate the centennial of America’s entry into WWI. “That was more cabaret style with performers reading letters, poems and singing songs.” Over the years, Boulanger developed the concept to include content from the historical letters – first published by Victor’s father in 1917 as Victor Chapman’s Letters from France – and Victor himself, speaking from beyond the grave to offer solace to his grieving father and stepmother through his words and music. “That’s what I call the magical realism version,” says Boulanger.
In Flanders Fields elicits both the dignity and trauma of WWI through the personal testimony of soldiers writing in the mud and muck of the trenches. The evening’s selection will also include poems by Alfred Edward Housman, Edith Wharton, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, George Butterworth and of course John McCrae. DC’s own John Phillip Sousa (the March King) will also be featured in the repertoire. This salon-style event is small so seating will be limited. Purchase your tickets now and dress in your best period attire. Pearls and medals are encouraged.
