The lady from the sea: Of love and existence

As part of the ongoing theatre festival titled 'Ibsen in Asia', Department of Theatre and Music, Dhaka University staged The Lady From the Sea at the Experimental Theatre Stage on May 13. The festival is organised by Centre for Asian Theatre in association with Bangladesh Shilpakala Academy and supported by Royal Norwegian Embassy.

Ellida (Soeri Sultana) is the beautiful second wife of Dr Wangle (Ashiqur Rahman Leeon) who has two daughters from his previous marriage, Bolette (Rehana Khatun Raha) and Hilde (Shamita Das). Ellida grew up in a lighthouse and seems to have more affinity with water than the land. Arnholm (AMM Noor-Us-Saiyem Khan) is a former suitor of Ellida and is asked by Dr Wangle to visit because he is concerned about Ellida. Lyngstrand (Syed Mamun Reza) is a talent-less sculptor who is dying of consumption.

Ellida is haunted by the memory of a sailor (Farhad Hassan) she knew years ago to whom she was promised. The sailor's return throws her marriage of economic convenience into question. Professor Abdus Selim is the translator of the play with much code mixing (mixture of Bangla and English in dialogue diction).

As director of the play, Dr Israfil Shaheen has elicited some uniformly solid work from the actors. His composition at the final scene when Ellida selects her own destiny as well as the entertaining scenes deserve plaudits. However, he could not create the tense scenes properly when the sailor returns to his beloved after 10 years of eclipse.

The Lady from the Sea is a play full of atmosphere. Riazuddin Mahmud has created different layers on the stage to evoke the Norwegian hilly seascape. And different ambiences were created by changing a few set elements.

For this production, Ahmed Kabir Young's light design seemed to be the weakest part. Lighting cues failed to co-ordinate with the acting cue. Moreover, because of the poor light settings, most part of the huge set had lack of visibility. And his use of symbolic colour on the cyclorama was not effective.

Kamol Khalid's music composition is effective for the play.

Soeri Sultana performed well as Ellida, who is emotionally inert and the nearby ocean becomes a point of obsession for her. Ashiqur Rahman Leeon's body language and voice modulation are suitable for the characterisation of Dr Wangle, who is a respectable person and caring husband. The other performers should try to act from the heart to make the play more interesting.