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The Bridge Theatre has had a big juicy hole in its programming for some months now, smack bang between the imminent return of Nicholas Hytner’s ecstatic immersive A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Jordan Fein’s revival of Sondheim’s immortal Into the Woods.
We’d hoped a starry play with an interesting director might plug the gap, and lo! It has come to pass. In a busy year for Ibsen adaptations – following the Lyric Hammersmith’s Ghosts, the Ewan McGregor-starring My Master Builder and a Lily Allen-led spin on Hedda Gabler over in Bath – auteur Aussie director Simon Stone will put his own spin on The Lady from the Sea. And he’s got some heavyweight leads in the shape of Andrew Lincoln and – in her stage debut – Academy Award-winning Swedish actor Alicia Vikander.
Ibsen’s 1889 drama concerns Ellida, a woman who has settled for a comfortable life that is shaken to the core when an old lover re-emerges. As with all Simon Stone’s works – most famously his Billie Piper-starring West End hit Yerma – the play is a modern interpretation that he himself has adapted and directed, so it’s hard to say precisely what details of the original will be retained, but he should do something pretty enthralling with it.
Vikander is a prolific screen actor best known for playing Lara Croft in the 2018 version of Tomb Raider and for her Oscar-winning supporting turn in 2015’s The Danish Girl. Lincoln was a regular on UK stages before finding major US success with The Walking Dead. Technically his last London stage role was playing Scrooge at the Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol in 2020, though the show was performed in front of webcams in an empty theatre due to the pandemic.
Vikander will play Ellida, and Lincoln her husband Edvard (whether the family name remains Wangel is TBC). There’s a third major role of Ellida’s dangerous ex-lover – in Ibsen simply called The Stranger – that is still to be cast, but all will presumably be revealed soon-ish. The show goes on general sale May 13, and you’ll be able to book here.
The Lady from the Sea is at Bridge Theatre, Sep 10-Nov 7.