Little Eyolf, Almeida

It's not often during eighty minutes of theatre that you have to bite back the temptation to heckle because the characterisation is so thin and the dialogue's as wooden as a flatpack table. And it's extremely rare to start thinking halfway through that eighty minutes, that proceedings are surely overrunning.  Little Eyolf is a short that, in this version, feels far too long. There's also a bigger Eyolf with a part in the action, but that's a bridge too far at this stage in the proceedings...

First, Little Eyolf,  who is disabled after falling off the nappy changer while his parents were having a quick frolic between the sheets. As it happens, neither of them loved him so it sort of doesn't matter, but then he drowns just minutes after his mother, Rita, has wished him dead. His father, Alfred, is genuinely distraught: he'd only just discovered he cared for Little Eyolf after all. For all of 24 hours there's upset, but as soon as the family has donned the black armbands, Little Eyolf is forgotten and his parents are back into emotion-by-numbers mode. And bigger Eyolf?  That's his Aunty Asta...

Richard Eyre wrote and directs this version of Ibsen's play. One sincerely hopes the original better draws out the back stories of the couple and the marriage at the heart of this tale because there is no sense of what orginally connected them, to explain why the baby's accident created such a disconnect. Alfred and Rita seem as confused as we are by their relationship to, as well as with, each other. They don't converse, they talk around each other in snivelling and sniping wodges of didactic script. There is a small sniff of incestuous longing between Alfred and his sister, Asta - bigger Eyolf - but even that falls flat because it doesn't make sense here.

In conclusion: It's been a lean month for this blog and by a strange quirk of fate, both November's productions were at the Almeida, had bland sets, terrible costumes, and involved the death of children. The theatre itself is lovely, but Little Eyolf in this rendering has no evidence of heart, of soul, of love, or redemption, and if that's the point, what's the point?

References
Tickets: Little Eyolf

Almeida Theatre, Almeida  Street, London N1 1TA    Run ends January 9 2016