A life not lived, the paths we didn't choose, the possibilities we let pass. Henrik Ibsen's Lady from the Sea tells the story of a secret, never experienced destiny. In place of reaching out for the unrestrained sea, Ellida finds herself in the shallow but harmless existence of petty bourgeois claustrophobia. Instead of running off with the mysterious love of her youth, an American boatman with eyes deep like the ocean, she has married the unsophisticated but decent Doctor Wangel, in whose tranquil home she less and less is able to find enough space to breathe.

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Even after five years of marriage, Ellida is still a stranger in her husband's house, and less and less she seems to be able to close the gap that the death of Wangel's first wife left in the family. Instead Ellida's gaze increasingly wanders out to the open ocean, her turning her thoughts to the other life that had once opened up for her when she in the face of the sea gave her word to the foreign sailor.

 

Ibsen's Lady from the Sea is a gracefully built psychological portrait and symbolically charged nightmare in one. The characters are guilt-ridden, oppressed, retreating into themselves rather than talking to each other. They feel guilt because they cannot be who they should be for each other. They are oppressed because they bend so far under the demands made of them that they would like to see everything collapse in order to finally feel free.

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Ibsen sees the solution to their conflicts not in escalation, not in Ellida leaving behind everything that seems to separate her from herself, but in her emancipation, in accepting her responsibility for her own destiny. But she can only be free after Wangel grants her this freedom - when he no longer tries to tie the beloved woman to himself by the means of dependence, but allows her to stay with him voluntarily and at her own request.

 

starring: Andreea Tănase, Sebastian Bălăşoiu, Adelaida Perjoiu, Ilie Ghergu, Marina Palii, Emanuel Bighe, Daniel Nuţă

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costume design: Raluca Frățiloiu

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