Guest director Adrian Giurgea and set designer Danila Korogodsky, collaborators on Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" at Glendale's A Noise Within, are willing to try just about anything in their version of Ibsen's tragicomedy about what happens to two families when truth becomes a weapon.
The result is definitely not a tame "Duck"--but in the overeager hands of Giurgea and Korogodsky, it's sort of a strange duck. Luckily, the play is strong enough to withstand their good intentions. This "Wild Duck" succeeds not because of their theatrical tinkering, but in spite of it.
Posted on the doors outside the theater is a warning: "The Wild Duck" is two hours and 45 minutes long, including one 15-minute intermission--a little daunting, no matter how committed one might be to theater (and Friday's opening night audience was committed indeed; one brave attendee was overheard to observe: "We've been through 'King Lear' here; we can do anything").
Faced with the challenge of the modern American attention span, one can hardly blame the creative forces behind the production for trying to make sure that a long, old play by a dead Norwegian contains enough innovation to make the journey worthwhile. But oddball elements of the set, as well as an over-the-top quality to some performances clearly dictated by the director, argue with the elegant clarity of the story. This play is good--it's hung around since 1884. There's no need to try quite this hard.
This is particularly true of certain maddening elements of Korogodsky's set. The play opens with a party scene at which the first gossipy details that lead to a long, inevitable journey toward tragedy begin to be revealed. Problem is, you can't hear them. The scene is played behind a big, incongruously modern-looking window wall at the back of the stage. It's not that the actors are not speaking loudly enough, but there's a tinny distortion of the voices through the glass. Act 1, Scene 1 of a two-hour-and-45-minute play is way too early to find yourself saying, "Huh?"
Luckily, the action moves quickly from behind glass to the front of the stage, which variously serves as a garden or the modest home of Hjalmar Ekdal (Geoff Elliott) and wife Gina (Julia Coffey), the hapless couple who suffer most at the hands of moralistic do-gooder Gregers Werle (Dougald Park). Here, the few simple sticks of furniture are all that's needed.
