WEEKENDER, January 18, 2003

A woman's own free will

IBSEN and Chekhov go together for more things than you can easily include in a list. They are the basics, they are difficult, they are a test for any director, they engage you but they require all your attention. Only a very good production can take away some of the burden involved in following the dialogue while trying to breathe in the heavy atmosphere. Actinghouse Productions made it possible to revisit Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea, with direction by Frank Hoerner; Irene Christ and Julian Manduca producing. Ladies are usually popular everywhere, but when they walk in from the sea, they come laden with all Mona Lisa's burden, and Pater's famous description of her underwater treasures. Psychologists have a great deal to say about the infinite richness of subconscious levels down there at the bottom of sea, deep down there.

Ask any mermaid, visit any swan lake. Like the moon, the sea is a woman's element. It flows and it ebbs, it rages and rolls, it swallows up and battens down, it has infinite moods and quick changes of temper, and you never know what to expect. This is not my judgment, but Ellida's husband's, let me hastily say to save my skin. Besides, you could probably say all this practically about any human being you know, or have to deal with close enough to hurt. Ellida comes from the sea, from a family connected with the sea, a lighthouse keeper's daughter, once engaged to a strange seaman who then went and stuck a knife into his captain, and killed him.

Ellida is obsessed with the sea, especially since she is being deprived of it by her marriage to a doctor who lives inland, hemmed in by the mountains around a remote Norwegian fjord, deprived of the sea-salt tang, enclosed, stifled, unloving if not unloved, unappreciated, confined like a goldfish in a fish-bowl, not even knowing herself what there is to know about herself. Except that she is stifled. And she hears voices and sees visions. It was not that Ellida's marriage was loveless. Nor that she had been forced to marry Wangel, or that she had not known about his previous wife and their two children. It was the social set-up that somehow "deprived" her of her free will. She felt she had been bought not wooed by her husband.

She says so without adducing proof, except for the social ones. She needs to have her freedom from Wangel before she can decide whether to go away with her seaman lover of long ago or stay with Wangel. You could pick holes in the argument if you are a rational male, but Ellida is a woman: she values her emotions above cold reason - even her subterranean currents must be listened to. What does a man know about those? Ellida has been traditionally understood as a champion of woman's liberation from man's stranglehold over woman in marriage.

That she is a man's artistic creation does not enter the equation. He probably created her despite himself. Perhaps she created herself through him. After all, even an artist has his anima. In any case, it is beautiful when Ellida is at last free to go away or stay, and all her problems have come to the surface to be anaesthetised, and she decides, without inner or outer constraints, in full freedom, in favour of being wife to her husband and mother to his daughters. The direction quite rightly opted for a part- surrealistic interpretation of what has been called, "this odd mixture of Symbolist drama and Chekhovian social comedy". We saw characters behind sea- blue gauze in stills, even before they entered on stage. The man from the sea was involved in conversations without faces or eyes making contact.

When he clapped, the juke-box orchestra changed tune, and people appeared from nowhere. In addition the production revelled in symbolism as profusely as the stage floor was strewn with fallen autumn leaves. The glass bowl was only twice addressed, once when the lighted cigarette was dropped, then when Ellida considered her psychological confinement over it. Pauses intervened, chairs fell, matches failed to ignite, cigarettes smouldered quietly when put away. These too became symbols of half heartedness, a life arrangement that doesn't work, expectations that are not met. There were bottles of wine, to play with, drink out of, or pour from over a sleeping mentor to make sure, puckishly, that he was awake to hear his young lover declare that girls didnot marry their teacher, as he was expecting her to do.

The production made good use of the space, with actors going upstairs where a tracery of leaf-less branches suggested a garden (the leaves were on the stage floor below). The man from the sea slid from the top, like a Tarzan or a deus ex machina, down a rope conveniently hanging there from the beginning. Drunks slept in the open-air even though this was Norway, and wore whatever they wanted to wear without feeling cold. The same clothes were worn by all the characters throughout. All of the gentlemen went tie-less, even the uniformed sailor.

A high platform formed an apron stage with entries and exits from the back. Music was provided by a coined juke-box, often kicked to shut up. There were times when the music was very apt. Faye Cachia Zammit and Francesca Fenech were the two delightfully cuddly daughters from the first marriage. The bigger one could also indulge a little flirtation and express a modicum of good sense about marriage relationship. Lino Mintoff played his part as a disengaged Unknown from the past, come to win all or lose all, and to accept without challenge the answer of a free will. I liked Ben Stuart, the wheezy would-be artist, with more sense than acknowledged by the two girls, fixated as they are on their proper mother. Jes Camilleri was Arnholm, the mentor, who has come along with the belief that one of the girls likes him. Poor thing, his choice is limited, having taught most of the girls around. But you don't marry your pupil, do you?

Godwin Scerri nearly turned the tables on Ellida. While the women ranted and often screamed to voice-bursting point (ugh), Scerri kept his voice rational, sympathetic, a vehicle of husband brokenness in the face of an enigma of a wife. What did she want? How could he make her happy? She breaks his heart when he discovers that even she does not know what she wants. How can you blame a man married to a woman who doesn't know what she wants? Perhaps it is a truth universally unacknowledged that none of us knows what we want. Perhaps it is a human predicament, and not just a female one.

Scerri was here more sinned against than sinning. Whether this was intentional or not I do not know, but he broke my heart with his tears, and I nearly gave up on his lady for his sake. Irene Christ was a remarkably beautiful Ellida, with a hairstyle that enhanced the soft contours of her face. Except for the frequently uncalled for screaming, she gave a very feeling performance, and her final choice became a great triumph for good sense and for goodness itself.

The production could have done with a little more energy and little less screaming. It was a bit slow especially in the first act, with stills and silences going on too long. Nevertheless, this is a production one can safely recommend. The play is on for two more weekends, and shouldn't be missed.

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