The Lady from the Sea with Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln at the Bridge Theatre – review

Some plays are perfectly formed but perhaps a little dull. Some meander but are utterly compelling. Ibsen’s The Lady from the Sea probably falls into the second category. Simon Stone’s adaptation “after Ibsen” certainly does.

Stone has made his reputation with visceral and gripping versions of classic drama, most notably in the UK with a lacerating Yerma (at the Old Vic, starring Billie Piper) and a savage Phaedra, at the National Theatre with Janet McTeer. The Lady from the Sea attracts a similarly luminous cast: Oscar-winning Alicia Vikander, Andrew Lincoln and Joe Alwyn among them.

It also plays the same game of taking an old script and giving it a vigorous, thrillingly contemporary shake-up. The opening scenes pitch us into the family life of Edward, a doctor, (Lincoln) and his two adult daughters, Hilda (a wonderfully vibrant stage debut from Isobel Akuwudike) and sardonic Asa (Gracie Oddie-Jones, also excellent).

They inhabit a gracious home on Windermere, where they are mourning Edward’s first wife, the girls’ mother, who has died five years earlier. Also in the mix is Heath (Alwyn), Edward’s dying patient, who quotes great chunks of poetry and speaks in a strangely old-fashioned way, and the sophisticated Lyle, in the sharp-talking form of John Macmillan, one of Stone’s regular collaborators.

Edward has invited Lyle over to cheer up his second wife, Ellida (Vikander), who is fragile after a miscarriage – and who, it soon emerges, is also haunted by the ghost of a man from her past, whom she promised her life to.

The naturalistic dialogue of these early exchanges fizzes with excitement and humour. This feels like a real home, with family tensions bubbling just below the surface. The script is demotic, flowing, beautifully written, and the entire cast inhabit it with ease, drawing the lines of character with power and subtlety.

The production, however, is clumsier than the script. I took against Lizzie Clachan’s staging – in long traverse, with the audience surrounding the playing area – that means from where I was sitting, I viewed events through a table, or from the back of a sun lounger. The offending objects (too big, too dominant) are removed in the second half when she and Stone pull off an astonishing coup de théâtre.

Just before the interval, Finn (Brendan Cowell), the secret man in Ellida’s past returns; as the audience files out, the stage crew turn the setting from light to dark, altering the covering of the stage to shiny black, the white table replaced by its black twin. As the second part unfolds, the stage fills with water – raining from above and filling a deep pool below. It is undoubtedly dramatic, adding to the sense of a stable life being engulfed by forces beyond anyone’s control, but it is so overwhelming that it’s easy to get lost in the mechanics of the drainage system rather than the human drama unfolding within it.

It’s also true that some of the changes Stone has made complicate rather than clarify the play’s intent. The work is essentially about Ellida’s moment of decision, about what she wants from her life. In seeking to make her dilemma true in the modern world, Stone has added an extra layer of guilt, which makes her a weaker rather than a stronger character. That guilt – her abandoning of her lover to his fate – is never examined. It just sits there. Additionally, he has included an environmental subplot that blurs the ratcheting emotional tensions of the play’s conclusion.

Such distractions only matter because so much of The Lady from the Sea is utterly superb. Lincoln is completely convincing as a man who prides himself on being good and yet, as his world unravels, he is suddenly revealed to be as vulnerable and flawed as everyone around him. Vikander is fascinating, a creature from a world apart, fidgety and anxious under pressure, potent in the stillness she finds as she faces Edward and Finn, striving for the right to make her own choices.

Alwyn (like Vikander making his stage debut) makes the best of a very strange part, providing levels of innocence, sadness and bemusement. Macmillan navigates through everything with great grace and wit.

It is a hugely enjoyable evening, full of insight and provocation. If it isn’t quite as revealing as the best of Stone’s work, it’s only because he has set himself a very high bar.