The Lady from the Sea review – Alicia Vikander left adrift in directionless Ibsen adaptation

Although playwright Simon Stone’s dialogue is almost aggressively 21st century, he doesn’t seem especially interested in the contemporary themes the production gestures to

When hyped directors put their stamp on a classic, they usually pare it back, making heightened emotions surge through a shortened runtime. But not Simon Stone, the Aussie director behind splashy, celebrity-heavy rewrites of Yerma (2016) and Phaedra (2023). He’s taken Henrik Ibsen’s tragic fable and extended it into something both lengthy and oddly mundane, bloated with new dialogue that namechecks OnlyFans and Nineties rap groups. It’s an unlikely showcase for the talents of a confident Andrew Lincoln (The Walking Dead) and Oscar winner Alicia Vikander, who seems understandably adrift making her stage debut in this directionless play.

Here, Stone swaps Ibsen’s dramatic Norwegian fjords for the gentler scenery of the Lake District, where a middle-class family are bickering in the summer sunshine. Lincoln is an affable, gently funny presence as Edward, a doctor swapping elaborate literary chitchat with his dying patient Heath (Joe Alwyn). But he’s doomed to be overpowered by his daughters Asa (Gracie Oddie-James) and Hilda (Isobel Akuwudike), who are vividly drawn teenage nightmares, full of morbid fantasies and uncomfortable sexual urges. Akuwudike shines as Hilda, who’s so hilariously desperate for excitement that she’ll insert herself into any passing tragedy, Heath’s included.

Among all this hubbub, the title’s Lady from the Sea is oddly quiet. Vikander feels marginal as Edward’s second wife Ellida, as if she’s a bystander in her own blighted love story. As a 15-year-old, she made a promise to her older lover Finn (Brendan Cowell), saying she’d wait for him to return. In Ibsen’s play, he was a sailor; here, he’s a climate activist who emerges from jail to disrupt Ellida and Edward’s comfortable marriage.

But although Stone’s dialogue here is almost aggressively 21st century, he doesn’t seem especially interested in the contemporary themes he gestures to. There’s almost no discussion of climate justice, while his exploration of how small-town racism affects Asa and Hilda stays at a surface level. More damningly, it feels as though, in laboriously engineering a plausible 21st-century setting for Ibsen’s story to unfold in, Stone has lost sight of what this play’s actually about.

Ellida’s pivotal choice between bourgeois comfort and the elemental, sexual lure of the sea is one that could feel current, but it comes across as an afterthought here. And that’s especially surprising considering the vast amounts of water that Stone drenches the stage with. Designer Lizzie Clachan creates a slick, spectacular pool for Ellida and her lost lover to clumsily couple in, fumbling with damp trousers in search of their long-awaited consummation.

It’s all a bit undignified for poor Ibsen. Like another recent update on his work, Lila Raicek’s My Master Builder, this play thoroughly retools his dialogue without finding a language for his symbolism. There’s nothing wrong with making centuries-old plays speak to new generations. But first, you’ve got to be crystal clear about what they’re trying to say.

‘The Lady from the Sea’ is at the Bridge Theatre until 8 November; tickets here