The Lady from the Sea: a ‘thrillingly contemporary’ Ibsen adaptation

“Some plays are perfectly formed but perhaps a little dull,” said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage . “Some meander but are utterly compelling.”

Ibsen’s “The Lady from the Sea” (1888) – about a young wife caught between safe domesticity and an old lover, a sailor who returns to her port town – probably fits in that latter category; and Simon Stone’s “after Ibsen” adaptation certainly does.

Stone has a reputation for “visceral and gripping” updates of classic dramas (“Yerma”, “Phaedra”). For this “thrillingly contemporary shake-up”, he has swapped 19th-century Norway for a modern home by Lake Windermere, and gathered a “luminous” cast, led by Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln. The result is “hugely enjoyable”; and if it “isn’t quite as revealing as the best of Stone’s work, it’s only be