Ibsen's seascapes of the soul

The National Theatre of Norway's visit to Print Room at the Coronet last year with a lacerating production of Ibsen's Little Eyolf has led to one of the most exciting collaborations in London theatre. Whatever the disasters the removal of EU free movement may mean for our cultural scene, Norway has the funds to make sure that the new company founded by the Allmers in that production, top actor Kåre Conradi, flourishes. The Norwegian Ibsen Company's first major offering, a slightly adapted update of The Lady from the Sea, maintains the level of vision we saw in Little Eyolf.

In one way, it adds to it. There's a clear distinction in the play between those Norwegians who long for freedom and the sea on the one hand and the more contained land-creatures like Wangel, who has married Ellida, 'The Lady from the Sea', on the other. So a mixed cast of British and Norwegian actors, slipping naturally from one language into another (English translation on the back wall, as in Little Eyolf, when Norwegian is spoken) suits one theme of the play.

Let's get the only weak link out of the way first. For me, Adrian Rawlins' Wangel (pictured above with Pia Tjelta; all images by Tristram Kenton) didn't quite add up: too nervy, rather unconvincing in the explosions of anger. I can't help wishing that Conradi, superb as the teacher Arnholm who returns on a misunderstanding to 'claim' Wangel's older daughter Bolette, had taken the more crucial character. But Rawlins, like Øystein Røger as a silver-fox, all-too-real Stranger, interacted well with the mesmerising Pia Tjelta, returning after her great performance as Rita Allmers in Little Eyolf to take on another of Ibsen's most compelling roles.

Proud but terrorised by her long-term images of the man who tried to claim her soul at sea, Tjelta's Ellida lets us read every emotion in her face. The voice, deep and sensual, does half the work. We're stricken with pity that Wangel as doctor plies her with pills - anti-depressants, tranquillisers? - to which it turns out he's not averse either. And then the magnificent straightening-up in the moment of decision, when the weight of constraining fantasy is lifted off her shoulders; it carries what can be a difficult moment dramatically. Much as I enjoyed Kwame Kwei-Armah's production at the Young Vic, which perhaps had a lighter touch, it didn't drive home in the same way that outward forces can also get buried and distorted deep in the psyche. A myth of the elements becomes an introspective drama. I thought of Sibelius, where dynamics of the soul are too often taken for forces of nature - the music has both, of course - and of Wagner, the second act of whose Die Walküre Jurowski described as 'an Ibsen play put inside a Homer epic'.

The test for the ensemble - this version sheds one character, Ballestad - really comes after the interval, in a sequence of devastating one-to-ones. The casting of three young people fresh from drama school is inspired. Edward Ashley (pictured above with Tjelta) manages the difficulty of making consumptive young artist Lyngstrand sympathetic even in his expectations of what a woman-as-wife should be for her husband - how daring for 1888 to have the object of his expectations challenge this so directly - while Marina Bye, fresh from the Guildhall as Bolette (pictured below with Conradi), seems to follow in Tjelta's footsteps in showing us what this girl longing for freedom, maybe at any price, is feeling at every moment.

Molly Windsor (pictured below with Rawlins) tells us who dangerous, impetuous Hilde Wangel, longing for love, is immediately, and what she will become in The Master Builder.

These are strong and yet paradoxically vulnerable women (that's the ambiguity of Ibsen's infinite depths for you). Director Marit Moum Aune has a masterstroke at the end: I shouldn't spoil it, but let's just say it's a grouping of which a modern audience wholeheartedly approves. Erlend Birkeland's set, making good use of a wide-projecting stage, gives the characters plenty of sand to play with; Simon Bennison's lighting works its magic and, when necessary, mystery.

The false note for me was the anodyne and way too persistent muzak of Nils Petter Molvær; I concede that a little might be necessary for the supposedly supernatural element, but better none at all than this. Otherwise, on with the next project. I might just go and see this one again; it runs until 9 March. Meanwhile, onwards to a Lithuanian sea-picture and Grieg's incidental music to Peer Gynt in Birmingham on Saturday. Then it's back to Norway, and a snowy inland landscape for a music festival with a difference.

Lille Eyolf

From unforgettable productions of Peer Gynt and Hamlet in Oslo, I know that Norwegian acting is up there with the best. The sing-songy language, too, makes it musical even when you don't grasp the sense. In Oslo, I mostly took only the general sense; in London, for the visit of the National Theatre of Norway with Ibsen's Little Eyolf, surtitles elegantly projected on the variegated back wall of Notting Hill's Coronet where the enterprising Print Room has its home kept the sense painful and focused.

Everything that wasn't clear or powerful in Richard Eyre's half-cock Little Eyolf at the Almeida - salvaged by a fine performance from Lydia Leonard - strikes with the force of Kafka's axe through the ice in this production by Sofia Jupither. First, it was a true ensemble, down to the soft-spoken creepiness of the Rat Wife (Andrine Sæther) who seems to serve around the Norwegian fjords and island as a Pied Piper to children as well as rodents. The contemporary setting only made her the more effective, cigarette in hand, air of an old hippy, seemingly harmless (you'd invite her in, but you might regret it). Young Eyolf (Sebastian Sørlie Lamb) wanting to be sporty, holding the unrealistic hope of being a footballer: an Emirates t-shirt, why not?

The four main performances were pitch-perfect. The most difficult and rewarding role is that of Rita, who wants husband Alfred all to herself still, 10 years into their marriage. Pia Tjelta transformed from a scornful, jealous, febrile clinger - powerful low tones you rarely get from a leading actor, though I've heard them from Janet McTeer and Hattie Morahan, coincidentally two excellent Noras - into a stricken mourner, a broken reed whose big idea in the last act consequently came over as plausible and moving (notice I'm resisting plot details, because the play can still shock those like J who don't know what's coming).

Lacerating grief isn't easy to portray convincingly on stage, but Kåre Conradi, the Alfred, made it believable too. Silences were charged, explosions always startling. No music, only soundscapes, within the acts; but it was fine that the passing of time between the tragedy of the first act and the response in changed weather 24-plus hours later should be served by chamber scoring (no sound credits given).

Equally good was the chemistry between Ine Jansen as the other Allmers, 'sister' Asta also known to the young Alfred as 'Little Eyolf', and John Emil Jørgensrud's honest roadmaker Borgheim. Their last scene together reduced me to tears, which didn't really stop until the faint hopefulness of the ending. The final wonder was how absolutely timeless Ibsen's devastating psychology remains; his characters may sometimes utter platitudes, but that's usually when they're trying to convince themselves of something they don't really believe in. And the theme of selfishness versus responsibility in public action is also very, very potent. More of this at the Print Room, please.