The Wild Duck

The Wild Duck 

By Henrik Ibsen 

Directed by Simon Godwin 

Shakespeare Theatre Company, Klein Theatre 

Washington, D.C. 

October 29, 2025 

Reviewed by Alexander Miller 

At a post-performance talkback on October 29, 2025, a question was posed to the assembled cast and crew of Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck: “Why is this play not done more?” The question is not without merit. According to the IbsenStage database, there have been ninety-four previous productions recorded in the United States since the play’s premiere in 1885. A paltry number, even before being compared to the 667 productions of A Doll’s House since 1882. STC’s artistic producer Drew Lichtenberg was quick to point out that the last performance of The Wild Duck in Washington D.C. was in 1986 at Arena Stage. In his program note, Lichtenberg suggests that the play is “harder to get right” than Ibsen’s other works, explaining that the play is a complex clash of tones and themes that can challenge directors and designers. This tension ran through STC’s production, and director Simon Godwin used it to drive a picture-perfect modernist performance that wrestled with the dangers of idealism and the flaws of pragmatism. 

The Wild Duck follows the reconnection of two childhood friends, Gregers Werle and Hjalmar Ekdal. Hjalmar lives a satisfying life with his wife Gina and daughter Hedvig, while the ever-idealistic Gregers lives in self-imposed exile, feuding with his father over accusations of infidelity made by Gregers’s late mother. When Gregers moves into the Ekdal residence, he believes his friend’s happiness is built upon a foundation of falsehoods as he realizes that Gina, in her previous life as the Werle’s housekeeper, was one of the women with whom his father was accused of cheating. In a crusade driven by his “chronic righteousness,” Gregers begins a chain reaction that leaves the Ekdals forever changed. Unseen but always felt throughout these events is the eponymous wild duck, Hedvig’s pet who resides, injured and flightless, in a makeshift lodge in the Ekdals’ attic. Throughout the implosion of the Ekdal family, Ibsen and the STC ask their audience what price must be paid to live a truly happy life. The production casts idealism of all kinds in an unflattering light, whether it be a devotion to radical honesty or delusional happiness. At the same time, the play does not offer a meaningful compromise to idealism; Ibsen leaves no moral to neatly tie up the Ekdals’ tragic collapse. This leaves the audience with the complex work of synthesizing their own conclusions. 

Lichtenberg highlighted this complexity in his program note, emphasizing that The Wild Duck defies simple metaphor. Sure enough, the cast’s performances challenged audience expectation and refused to be simply defined. The actors committed to crafting deep backstories and inner lives for their characters, a process that paid off in their delivery. Alexander Hurt played the dangerously convicted Gregers Werle as a man certain he is the hero of his own story.  

The desire to root against him is buffeted by Hurt’s impeccable comic delivery of some of the best laughs in the show. He is foiled by Matthew Saldívar’s Doctor Relling, the nihilist who stands as a competing influence on Hjalmar Ekdal. Saldívar created a profoundly sad Relling, who is committed to seeing others live happily no matter what. Standing between them is Nick Westrate’s Hjalmar, who captured the experience of a happy family man and betrayed husband in equal measure. Westrate’s performance demonstrated that despite the surety of both Gregers’s and Relling’s philosophies, the struggle between truth and happiness is far more problematic in practice. The practical cost of this fight is carried by Melanie Field’s Gina and Maaike Laanstra-Corn’s Hedvig, whose devotion to their family and love for their husband/father was tragic. The uplifting humor in the production was punctuated by explosions of conflict, the potential of violence, and desperate sadness, with each incident ringing out like a shot that foreshadowed the play’s tragic ending. The ensemble enacted Ibsen’s drama in a manner that was both authentic to the author’s intentions and immersive to a modern day audience. 

For all the layers of Ibsen’s characters that defy categorization, The Wild Duck also depended on a straightforward design language that faithfully captured a nineteenth-century modernist aesthetic. Photography sat as a running theme throughout the play; the Ekdals run a photography studio and are seen cleaning and adjusting their work for clients. A metaphor for the way Hjalmar’s life has been “touched up” by others, this theme echoed in the production’s lobby display, which featured daguerreotype style portraits of the cast in full costume. These costumes, designed by Heather C. Freedman, provided a consistent palate that evoked melodramatic archetypes: the conniving Gregers was always in an elegant black coat and suit, the innocent Hedvig in blue and white patterned dresses and sweaters, the nihilistic Relling in a worn grey suit, and the hardworking Ekdals in brown tweed and plaid.  

Scenic designer Andrew Boyce and lighting designer Stacey Derosier crafted the Ekdals’ apartment as a well-lived space of wood and glass windows, complete with a staircase to the attic where the wild duck resides along with a small coterie of other animals. The attic door was decorated with a pastoral backdrop of firs and a bright sun, clearly drawn to capture Hedvig’s love for a natural world she cannot take part in. These design choices brought a clarity of thought to the production that threatened to undercut the profound inner complexities of the characters. 

It would do a great disservice to Ibsen to either flatten his characters into two-dimensional heroes and villains or to completely write off their actions in a haze of post-modern moral ambiguity. Simon Godwin and the Shakespeare Theatre Company masterfully walk that line, offering their audience a rare opportunity to The Wild Duck in flight. The importance of this production of The Wild Duck lived in the delicate tension between the complex inner turmoil of the actors and the clear imagery of the design. While at first glance Gregers might seem like a devil offering discord, Hurt did not reduce him to the mustachioed villain of a melodrama. But it is also impossible to ignore the real harm that Gregers’s actions do throughout the play, and this harm was emphasized by the clear design framework which gave Gregers a more sinister bend. Just as photography is an art form renowned for showing its subjects as they are, it can also be doctored to create an illusion of what is. Providing both clarity and nuance addressed the potential pitfalls of both approaches and allowed the audience to engage with the moral reckoning of The Wild Duck. 

To return to the question of why this play is not done more: I agree with Lichtenberg that is a play hard to get right because it asks so much of its audience. But the struggle between happiness and truth must be fought by every generation. In our current political climate, this struggle sits front and center in many people’s minds. So perhaps it is good that The Wild Duck has returned to the stage to remind us that simple idealism can be dangerous, and the best solutions are found through challenge and conversation.