Review: Little Eyolf

It is not just rats that gnaw in Ibsen's psychological drama, it is guilt too.

The play begins with intellectual Alfred Allmers (Jonathan Cullen), returning from the mountains, where he has been trying to discover the meaning of life, to his possessive wife Rita (Imogen Stubbs). Alfred married Rita for money, though more for the benefit of his half-sister, Asta (Nadine Lewington), than his own.

While Asta struggles to keep in check feelings for her brother that are more than platonic, the household's neuroses are fuelled chiefly by Alfred and Rita's guilt for their lame son, Eyolf, whose damaged leg is the result of his falling off the kitchen table when he was a baby while his parents made love.

Don't laugh. Despite all this, and an emotionally wrought Stubbs, Ibsen's play somehow avoids tipping into absurd melodrama. To that end, Anthony Biggs's solid and simple direction no doubt helps, as does Michael Meyer's translation which was first used in the RSC's 1999 production of the play.