“A challenging, essential revival. The Wild Duck refuses to look outward, forcing its audience into a brutal, compartmentalized reckoning with the truths we hide from those we love most.”
What Truth Costs When No One’s Asking for It
Shakespeare Theatre Company’s The Wild Duck is a rare, quietly devastating production that emphasizes a family reckoning rather than our political newsfeed. Its distinct thrills arise from design, sound, and the uneasy spatial relations crafted by its actors. Henrik Ibsen famously called this play a story about family, not politics; director Simon Godwin’s staging echoes this sentiment by honing in on secrets, self-protection, and little fictions that keep households intact.
The characters often appear emotionally disjointed, each reasoning with themselves until one man’s quest for the capital-T Truth disrupts the room. The minimalist set designs in some past iterations contrast sharply with the STC’s intricate staging, providing a fresh visual and emotional depth. STC highlights the rarity of this revival, presenting The Wild Duck as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience Ibsen’s moral complexity. It’s a play that forces the audience to reflect on the question: What do we owe the truth, and what does it owe us?
Design That Expands the Room—and Tightens the Screws
Andrew Boyce’s set is a masterstroke: expansive yet humble, a textured dwelling that breathes like a home but compresses like a trap. The rustic loft, with its skylit clutter and hidden menagerie, mirrors the Ekdal family’s fragile existence—both refuge and pressure cooker. The soundscape, arranged and performed live by Alexander Sovronsky, threads in Norwegian folk and classical idioms (think Ole Bull, Hardanger fiddle, langeleik, and viola). The musical scene transitions into a cultural undertow, a haunting reminder that the family’s illusions are as inevitable as the notes Sovronsky draws from his instruments.
Together, the design elements create a world where every object and sound carries symbolic weight, deepening the play’s emotional resonance.
Performances That Keep Their Distance—for a Reason
The ensemble’s deliberate alienation serves the play’s themes: we rationalize alone. Alexander Hurt’s Gregers Werle embodies needling idealism, his moral certainty a blade that cuts deeper than he intends. Nick Westrate’s Hjalmar Ekdal is a study in wounded self-invention, his performance heartbreakingly raw as he clings to crumbling illusions. Melanie Field, as Gina Ekdal, grounds the drama in a lived-in, willfully blind pragmatism, offering the necessary counterweight to the men’s intellectual crises. Robert Stanton’s Håkon Werle exudes patrician gravity, his presence a reminder of the generational trauma lurking beneath family legacy.
The production’s emotional maelstrom finds levity—and perhaps its sharpest wisdom—in Matthew Saldivar’s dual performance as Dr. Relling and Captain Balle. Saldivar cuts through the tension with cynical, inebriated clarity, offering the audience (and the characters) the sole external voice of reason. His presence underscores a brutal truth: sometimes, clarity comes from the outside, even if it’s just the angry shouting at life’s unfolding.
The Hidden Bird and the Hard-Kept Lie
The play’s central metaphor—the unseen, injured wild duck—serves as a precious symbol for the untruths we bury to preserve our closest relationships. Like the duck, the family’s core deceptions remain out of sight, their existence acknowledged but never fully confronted. The Wild Duck draws us into the intimate orbit of the Ekdals, asking what beautiful, necessary lies we tell to keep our bonds intact, if only for a moment.
This production is a potent reminder that truth, when wielded as a weapon, often exacts a tragic toll. In an era of performative honesty and political nonsense, Ibsen’s play feels urgently relevant, a cautionary tale about the fragile nests of polite lies we build to make our home —and how they can all come crashing down when pushed into moral absolutism.
Final Details: The Wild Duck Where: Shakespeare Theatre Company, Klein Theatre, 450 7th St NW, Washington, DC 20004 When: Now through November 16, 2025 Runtime: 2 hours and 30 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission Tickets: Starting at $39; average price ~$60. Purchase tickets or call (202) 547-1122.
Featured image: Alexander Hurt, Matthew Saldívar, and Nick Westrate in The Wild Duck. Photo courtesy of Shakespeare Theatre Company.
