The Aurora Theatre is again playing around with Ibsen, a playwright not noted for playfulness. Last year, it presented The Monster-Builder, Amy Freed's humorously contemporary mashup of horror genres and Ibsen's The Master Builder. Now it's an Ibsen play without the renown of his major titles that has been pulled into the present for a spotty makeover.
Little Eyolf has become Little Erik in writer-director Mark Jackson's adaptation having its world premiere at Aurora. The Ibsen original is not an easy play to get your head around, shooting off in such differing plotlines with their abutting combustibities, plus a mystical figure who seems connected to a different play. Little Eyolf does have its cadre of fans, which has included even the likes of George Bernard Shaw, and a recent London production directed by Richard Eyre (former head of the National Theatre) was widely applauded for its intense if grim exploration into what constitutes happiness.
The contemporary setting of the new play follows the basic schematic of the original, and there are moments when Ibsen's ideas gain new resonance, but talk of cellphone reception, Skype, Google, and other techie terms never rings quite right. Although the locale is a stylish new getaway home for a wealthy San Francisco couple, the moody aura is a little bit punctured each time modern technology is referenced. How Little Erik departs from Little Eyolf at the play's end will not be revealed here, so let us just say it is a deus ex machina of laughable proportions.
Jackson's direction of his play often uses stylized staging, startling musical stings, and ominous sounds that can amp up the seeming import of scenes that the dialogue alone would not suggest. He has brought in humor for a present-day audience, and parts of the storyline that Jackson has carried over from Ibsen can still take an audience aback, so you can only imagine the impact they had in 1894.
The title character in Little Erik is a major presence though he has only brief moments on the stage. He's a high-spirited lad of about 8 who has big dreams despite his reliance on crutches from an injury that happened when his parents had left him alone in one of their bouts of passionate lovemaking. His mother wishes the boy had never been born, while his father now devotes his attentions to the boy rather than his wife. "He was a mistake," says Joie, a successful businesswoman who had no interest in being a mother.
At least until Erik's accident, she was happy enough using her husband as a sex object, while Freddie lived happily off his wife's money while contemplating writing a great tome on human responsibility. But some sort of revelation struck Freddie during a trip aboard, and he announces upon his return that deeds rather than words are his new calling. That includes being even more attentive to Erik, and it's not the only relationship making his wife jealous; Freddie is disturbingly close to his half-sister. Even when Erik drowns while following a mysterious woman known as the Rat Wife, Joie is still not getting the sexual attention that once drove the marriage.
Throw into the mix a dogged suitor pursuing Freddie's half-sister, and there are several very different dramas being played out, intersecting at points, but somehow not pulling together. There are more definitive resolutions in the Ibsen original, but Jackson chooses to end his play with more flash than substance.
There is one outstanding performance amid an able cast, and it fortunately happens to be in the best role. Marilee Talkington is fearsome as Joie, a stylish woman who demands deference, the kind of person who calls 911 for repair work on her home. Joe Estlack and Mariah Castle are fine in the less flashy roles of conflicted half-siblings, and Greg Ayers provides comic relief as the nerdy architect who designed the sylvan retreat (simply but stylishly rendered in Nina Ball's set design).
Kudos to young Jack Wittmayer, who plays Erik navigating steps and the stage on crutches and with a severely twisted leg that is only revealed as a convincing physical pretense at the curtain call. Wilma Bonet potently creates an ominous, mystical aura in the small but critical role of the wizened Rat Wife.
Little Erik uneasily straddles Ibsen's 19th-century world and the contemporary landscape that Jackson has pulled it into. The story would probably work better from a distance, a curiosity from a master playwright of long ago rather than an effort to remodel it into a contemporary fable.
Little Erik will run at Aurora Playhouse through Feb. 28. Tickets are $32-$50. Call (510) 843-4822 or go to auroratheatre.org.