The Lady from the Sea
Print Room at the Coronet, London

Pinter Seven
Harold Pinter Theatre, London

A generally accepted measure of a great dramatist is that their works reveal new riches with multiple viewings. I was able to test this theory last week with productions of plays by Henrik Ibsen and Harold Pinter that took my experience of each well on to the fingers of a second hand.

The Lady from the Sea, written in 1888, was part of Ibsen’s gradual transition to his native Norway after decades of self-exile in Italy and Germany. Inspired by seeing a Norwegian fjord for the first time in years, he created the tale of Ellida, the second wife of Dr Wangel, a physician in a seaside resort. Unloved stepmother to Wangel’s two daughters with his dead first wife, Ellida is anguished by imagining the alternative life she might have had with a former lover, a sailor who returned to sea.

Even for those familiar with the text, the version staged at the enterprising Print Room at the Coronet theatre has an immediate originality. This production by the Norwegian Ibsen Company, a recently set-up attempt to give Ibsen the equivalent of an RSC, has a mix of Norwegian and English actors.