'The Lady from the Sea' review — Alicia Vikander is achingly haunted in Simon Stone's Ibsen adaptation

Read our review of Simon Stone's adaptation of the Ibsen classic The Lady from the Sea, now in performances at the Bridge Theatre through 8 November.

Summary

• Simon Stone adapts Henrik Ibsen's late 19th-century play about a woman torn apart by the return of a past lover
• Alicia Vikander makes a haunting London stage debut opposite Andrew Lincoln
• Lizzie Clachan's minimalist set creates wonderful stage magic with the introduction of a pool midway through Act II

Australian writer-director Simon Stone has developed a reputation for his big, bold explosions of classic texts. In 2016, Billie Piper starred in a five-star, reworked version of Yerma; in 2023, his reimagining of Phaedra transplanted the action from ancient Greece to the home of a modern-day politician, asking questions about post-menopausal desire.

Now, Stone has taken his writer’s scalpel to Ibsen’s late 19th-century work The Lady from the Sea, dampening the play’s more mystical elements in favour of foregrounding the very real, unravelling family at the heart of this intense and strangely tragi-comic production.

Ellida (played by Oscar winner Alicia Vikander in her London stage debut) is the younger second wife of Andrew Lincoln’s Edward, an eminent doctor living in a plush home in gentrified Ullswater with two teenage daughters from his first marriage: straight shooter Asa (Grace Oddie-James), who has aspirations of leaving the Lake District for an academic life at Yale, and her younger sister Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike) who, of the two, seems to be struggling more with the (relatively unexplained) death of their mother. She develops a romantic interest in the family’s distant cousin Heath (Joe Alwyn, also in his stage debut), but only when he has been given a terminal diagnosis.

There’s a lot to unpack here, and that’s all before Ellida’s past lover Finn (played by Brendan Cowell, who also starred in Yerma) returns to disrupt the action in Act II, but Stone does a miraculous job of giving shape and texture to every character in the cast with his sharp, clever writing, which blasts the production into the present, referencing everything from ChatGPT and OnlyFans, to Poets of Instagram.

The play’s central tenet remains — how much free will can you have in a monogamous marriage? — and Vikander and Lincoln aggressively interrogate this during a charged scene in which Ellida reveals her plan to meet with Finn at their family home, offering: “I can’t do what I need to if you’re here.” The words hang in the air, and somehow the implication feels just as shocking as it would have in 1888. Lincoln’s English gentleman explodes into a territorial rage: “I know I’m a pseudo alpha c*** [...] I want you to be mine, not anyone else’s — how f--king primitive.”

The action truly ramps up, however, when Lizzie Clachan’s minimalist, in-the-round set boldly switches from bright white to black (even down to the sun lounger and radio) and the elements begin to press in, as overhead sprinklers symbolically soak the cast, turning the second act into a test of endurance. They are literally drowning in their emotions. In a particularly captivating moment, Ellida and Finn stand centre stage as a hidden platform begins to lower them and water rushes in around their ankles, creating a pool before our eyes. It is a wonderful piece of stage magic. Reconnecting in the water — having separated on an oil rig out at sea — they are raw and primal, groping and writhing in the dimly lit waters, though they make an odd pair after years apart and something about the chemistry is slightly off.

Dressed in saturated, baggy clothing, the waif-like Vikander is achingly haunted, while Lincoln’s steady, well-mannered doctor unravels as he tries to be ‘the good guy’ and give his wife the space she needs to work through past trauma. There are other strong performances — from Alwyn in the strange role of Heath, who finds a new way to live even while dying, while John Macmillan (as family friend Lyle), Akuwudike, and Oddie-James are a breakaway trio, often giving some light relief to proceedings.

Stone’s overly long Act II could definitely benefit from a dramaturgical cut, with so many competing ideas and characters fighting for centre stage, but his work remains, as ever, ambitious and thought-provoking in how it takes old texts and turns them into something new.

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Photo credit: The Lady form the Sea at the Bridge Theatre. (Photos by Johan Persson)