Theatre review: The Lady From The Sea with Alicia Vikander & Andrew Lincoln

Watery family drama floats my boat

Bridge Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Andrew Lincoln & Alicia Vikander in The Lady From The Sea. Photo: Johan Persson

Simon Stone brought us Yerma with Billie Piper, one of the finest productions I have ever seen, and Phaedra with Janet McTeer which was pretty good too. He likes to take a classic, tear it apart, get down to its basics, and rebuild it for the modern world. So did he pull it off with Henrik Ibsen, father of theatrical realism, and stars Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln? The answer is, yes, with style. It is an entertaining, amusing, gripping, unique piece of theatre.

The evening starts (and continues) with much would-be witty repartee of the kind that you find in fiction rather than real life, except this production often presents it as crass or cringeworthy, and characters talk over one another, and mock one another. Ibsen was an early proselytiser of theatrical realism which meant believable conversations featuring middle class families that middle class theatre audiences could identify with, as opposed to the previous focus on royalty and gods. This play, with a script developed by the actors in conjunction with writer director Simon Stone, pays full homage to Ibsen with its realistic dialogue.

The subject matter is serious but this version is also very funny. One of exchanges that made me laugh, given the title of the play, was when someone said to Ellida: ‘You must be the lady of the house’ and she responded: ‘Did he just call me a lady?’

The play is set in the modern day in the Lake District, which makes a change from the Cotswolds, and is sprinkled with contemporary references, to OnlyFans and Just Stop Oil and the like, but the themes of love, loss and the effect of the past on the present are eternal and universal.

Edward and his second wife Ellida seem happy. Although his daughters from his first marriage are rebellious and rude, the couple are able to shrug it off. Then a former lover appears and Ellie must make a choice between an unfinished relationship and her current love.

Death hangs over the narrative: there are suicides, one by Edward’s first wife; Edward and Ellida have lost a child through miscarriage; a visiting young sculptor has a terminal illness. While the presence of death in their lives messes up some of the characters’ lives, it also acts as a reminder that life is short and unpredictable, and needs to be lived, not postponed. Dramatic choices and revelations continue to the end.

The acting is uniformly excellent but none better than the two leads- Andrew Lincoln is totally convincing as a man lacking confidence, despite being a leading neurologist. This is revealed to be the result of a cold father. Events test Edward’s liberal attitudes to breaking point. He, like the script, is funny, angry and anguished.

Alicia Vikander is a more subdued presence playing a quietly confident mature woman, with a slightly flat, stuttering delivery that made all the more powerful her passion, when it came out. At that point, she seemed to revert to the nervous, vulnerable youngster from twenty years earlier, who made decisions that would shape her life.

The young people- two teenage daughters planning the first stages of adulthood, and the dying sculptor- remind us of the turbulence of life as a young person. I loved Isobel Akuwudike and Gracie Oddie-James as the stroppy but ultimately caring daughters, and Joe Alwyn is wonderfully neurotic as the sculptor. John Macmillan is spot-on as the blunt, faithful family friend Lyle. Brendan Cowell is suitably charismatic as Finn, the lover from the past.

The Lady From The Sea at The Bridge. Photo: Johan Persson

Lizzie Clachan’s magnificent set isn’t in keeping with ideas of realism. It is pure theatre. The show is set in the round, bringing the audience close to the actors in this intimate family drama. There are minimal props- a table and chairs in one corner and a sun lounger opposite. (Avoid seats near the right corner as you enter the auditorium and the opposite corner on the far side, as these bits of furniture will sometimes obscure your view.)

During the interval, the entire set, both the floor and the small number of props are changed from completely white to totally black. Straightaway, you feel there will trouble ahead! The beginnings of scenes increasingly overlap with the ends of the previous ones, as the tension increases- as if we can’t wait to see what happens next.

Much of the baggage Ellida carries is weighed down by events at sea, so , in an eye-popping moment in the second act, water appears, first as heavy rain, then as shallow water when part of the stage drops. Two lovers make out in it with echoes of From Here To Eternity, before it becomes a swimming pool. It may not be an immersive production from the audience’s point of view but some of the actors are fully immersed in the pool. It could only happen in theatre. But, far from being gloomy, the water- like the play itself- is ultimately cleansing.

This is an intense piece of theatre I wouldn’t have wanted to miss.

The Lady From The Sea can be seen at The Bridge until 8 November 2025. Buy tickets direct from the theatre

Paul purchased his ticket.

Click here to watch a video of this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

September 20, 2025October 2, 2025

Theatre reviews roundup: The Lady from the Sea

Ibsen update: intense or mundane?

Bridge Theatre

Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln in The Lady from the Sea. Photo: Johan Persson

Following his visceral adaptations of Yerma and Phaedra, writer/director Simon Stone has turned his attention to Ibsen’s The Lady From The Sea. Screen stars Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln, plus Joe Alwyn and Brendan Cowell, impressed the critics but opinions varied on the quality of the adaptation. As a modern day middle class marriage comes under fire, some found it intense, others thought it was meandering and an insult to Ibsen. Lizzie Clachan’s traverse set uses a lot of water in the second act to metaphorical effect, which most critics enjoyed but some found over the top.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

4 stars ⭑⭑⭑⭑

The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar commented: ‘Simon Stone is known for his rock’n’roll takes on the classics. This is a characteristically high-octane version of Ibsen’s play: loud, modern and led by screen stars Alicia Vikander and Andrew Lincoln. Yet his script, again created in the rehearsal process, retains all of Ibsen’s layers and adds some of its own in the updating’. She talked of : ‘the full-bodied intensity of the production, which is fantastically original, gripping and magnificent to the end.’

The Standard’s Nick Curtis called it ‘a dense, emotionally intense and often hilarious three hours – and god knows, belly laughs aren’t common with Ibsen – marred by a certain glibness.’ He explained: ‘As he formerly did with Lorca’s Yerma and Seneca’s Phaedra, Stone rebuilt the play in rehearsal with his cast, and they’ve worked hard to create a psychological and narratively coherent modern parallel for Ibsen’s ocean-worshipping mysticism…It works, but it reduces the play to being all about daddy issues.’

Dave Fargnoli of The Stage praised the stars and the writer: ‘Heading a uniformly strong cast, Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander’s Ellida roils with subdued emotion, her anxieties and divided loyalties visibly bubbling under the surface’…’Andrew Lincoln gives a consummate performance as neurologist Edward, maintaining an air of focused calm and fairness in the face of continual provocation’…’Stone’s contemporary dialogue is fast-paced and ferociously entertaining, equal parts realistic rhythms and deliberately grandiose pronouncements.’

WhatsOnStage’s Sarah Crompton said: ‘The script is demotic, flowing, beautifully written, and the entire cast inhabit it with ease, drawing the lines of character with power and subtle’ but complained: ‘The production, however, is clumsier than the script. I took against Lizzie Clachan’s staging – in long traverse, with the audience surrounding the playing area – that means from where I was sitting, I viewed events through a table, or from the back of a sun lounger.’ She concluded: ‘It is a hugely enjoyable evening, full of insight and provocation.’

3 stars ⭑⭑⭑

Matt Wolf writing for The Arts Desk declared: ‘Like the lighting that crackles now and again to indicate an abrupt change of scene or mood, Simon Stone’s version of The Lady from the Sea is illuminated by the sense of adventure and excitement one has come to expect from this singular artist.’

The Financial Times’ Sarah Hemming found: ‘Stone’s dialogue crackles with wit…It’s peppered too with truths about love, the competing urges for freedom and security, the intensity of youthful emotions that blaze in the memory, the legacy of parental failings and frailties. Above all there’s the uncertainty and restlessness of living in such a messed-up world. It’s also superbly acted.’

Tongue in cheek, Andrjez Lukowski of TimeOut described a pattern in Stone’s adaptations: ‘rewrite the whole thing into aggressively modern English that revolves around long, light hearted stretches of posh people swearing amusingly, season with a bit of Berlin-indebted stage trickery, and finally change tack and wallop us with the tragedy, right in the guts.’ He concluded: ‘when it’s serious, it’s very good. And when it’s silly it remains maddeningly entertaining.’

Dominic Maxwell of The Times commented: ‘It’s full of skill and ingenuity. But the 21st-century self-awareness drowns out Ibsen’s alluring strangeness as much as it makes it resonate.’

The Telegraph’s Dominic Cavendish felt: ‘The snag is that the staging, by Australian hotshot Simon Stone (with semi-abstract design by Lizzie Clachan), leaves his cast first high and dry on an exposing platform, then drowning in directorial overkill, as a deluge turns the set into a raised pool.’

Fiona Mountford of the i started positively: ‘The great news is that Andrew Lincoln …and… Alicia Vikander – in her London stage debut – make for a phenomenal central pairing as a distinguished older man on his second marriage and an attractive younger woman on her first.’ However, ‘The trouble with Stone’s updating of this story – of past loves returning to haunt current lives – is that he attempts to afford too many characters too great a slice of the dramatic action.’

2 stars ⭑⭑

Alice Saville of The Independent was damning about Stone’s adaptation: ‘He’s taken Henrik Ibsen’s tragic fable and extended it into something both lengthy and oddly mundane, bloated with new dialogue that namechecks OnlyFans and Nineties rap groups. It’s an unlikely showcase for the talents of a confident Andrew Lincoln..and..Alicia Vikander, who seems understandably adrift making her stage debut in this directionless play.’ She went on: ‘it feels as though, in laboriously engineering a plausible 21st-century setting for Ibsen’s story to unfold in, Stone has lost sight of what this play’s actually about.’ She decided: ‘It’s all a bit undignified for poor Ibsen… this play thoroughly retools his dialogue without finding a language for his symbolism.’

The Mail’s Patrick Marmion was also disappointed, describing the main characters as ‘a blandly homogenous bunch of wittering, health-conscious hedonists, without a cultural, moral, or political compass between them.’

Critics’ Average Rating 3.2⭑

Value rating 35 (Value rating is the Average Critic Rating divided by the typical ticket price.)

The Lady from the Sea can be seen at the Bridge Theatre until 8 November 2025. Buy tickets directly from the theatre

Click here to read Paul Seven Lewis’ review of The Lady From The Sea

If you’ve seen The Lady from the Sea at The Bridge, please leave your rating and review below

December 22, 2020

Theatre To Watch At Home

The Best Stage Shows Online or on TV

Let’s face it, for many of us, the only way we’re going to get to see some theatre in the foreseeable future is on a screen, either online or on TV. So here are the best theatre shows that you can watch in your own home.

All my recommendations come with a health warning. This is because films of stage shows rarely convey what makes theatre unique. Film can offer highly realistic spectacle whereas spectacle in a theatre requires more imagination. On the other hand, its physical reality in the form of a massive set or two dozen dancing feet can be eyepopping, and the physical presence of actors performing in front of you creates a tension that can’t be replicated in a film where things are re-filmed and edited to predictable perfection. Also, what seems totally natural when you’re watching it- the louder voice, the bigger gesture- looks totally unnatural when you see it on a screen because the language of film is about small facial expressions in close-up and words delivered at conversational levels.

Experienced theatre goers can of course allow for this but I worry that people new to theatre will simply think how ‘stagey’ it all is.

Hamilton

Top of my list is Hamilton. It’s one of my favourite musicals so disappointment at a film version was almost inevitable but, against all my expectations, the film of the Broadway show is a triumph. It remains a theatrical show but the music and movement carry you along. As a bonus, you get to see the original cast including Lin-Manuel Miranda. Even if you’re not interested in Toy Story and Frozen, take a month’s subscription to Disney Plus, just for Hamilton.

Uncle Vanya

Uncle Vanya, Chekhov’s classic play about getting old and wasted time and unrequited love, sensitively modernised by Conor McPherson, was having a phenomenally successful run at the Harold Pinter Theatre when Covid cut it short. So the producers decided to film it and what we get is not simply the play filmed but a stage play enhanced by film. In some ways, because the cast can speak normally and to camera, it’s better than the original and that’s saying something of a production that got pretty much universal five star reviews. The leads Toby Jones, Richard Armitage and Roger Allam live up to the epithet ‘stars’. It’s on BBC4 at 10pm on 30 December and then I assume on BBC iPlayer.

Sea Wall

Sea Wall by Simon Stephens starring Andrew Scott is another stage play specially filmed without an audience. It’s a one man show in which the camera barely wavers from looking at Scott as he recounts a tragic event that engulfed him. It is devastating as a play and in no small part because of the visceral performance by Andrew Scott. and you can buy it for about £5.00. Find out more at seawallandrewscott.com

A Christmas Carol at The Old Vic

One of the most anticipated Christmas shows in recent years has been the annual revival of the Old Vic’s A Christmas Carol. This year’s Scrooge is Andrew Lincoln. I saw the show a couple of years and it was one of the most enjoyable evenings I’ve spent in a theatre. I was a little worried when I heard that the Old Vic were streaming it because the production relies so much on being an immersive performance where actors and props are coming at you from all directions. However what the Old Vic are doing, even though the theatre is closed to the public, is to continue to stage live performances until Christmas Eve and stream them. Again, like Uncle Vanya, they can adapt it for the camera. Some of the best bits of immersion, such as all the food flowing from the circle to the stage, can’t be conveyed, and some of the use of Zoom is clunky, but it’s still an uplifting experience. Tickets are available from oldvictheatre.com

Pantomime

Lots of enterprising theatres have made their pantos available online including the National Theatre’s Dick Whittington. It’s radical, it’s politically correct and rather garish but an excellent production. You watch Dick Whittington for free on their YouTube channel from 3pm on Wednesday 23 December, then available on demand until midnight on Sunday 27 December. More details here on the National Theatre website.

For me the panto to watch with the family this Christmas is Peter Duncan’s traditional Jack And The Beanstalk. He understands panto and does everything you’d expect from a panto, including lots of audience participation. It may be old fashioned in many ways but I found that rather comforting in these troubled times, like a Christmas pudding- and its saving the planet theme is bang up to date.

I’ll mention a couple more children’s shows that the whole family can enjoy. The Wind in The Willows with a script by Julian fellowes and an hilarious performance as Mr Toad by Rufus Hound can be streamed for £4.99 from willowsmusical.com And you can watch the delightful Timpson The Musical in which gigglemug Comedy imagine how the high street cobblers came also to cut keys by portraying the warring houses of Montashoes and Keypulets united by a pair of star-crossed lovers. And that’s free on YouTube.

Streaming

Yerma starring Billie Piper at the Young Vic reviewed by Paul Seven Lewis of One Minute Theatre Reviews — Yerma starring Billie Piper at the Young Vic. Photo: Johan Persson

Lots of arts streaming services have been springing up this year, the biggest of which from a theatre goer’s point of view is NationalTheatreAtHome who are gradually making available their vast archive of productions. Right now you can watch Tom Hiddleston’s Coriolanus, Helen Mirren’s Phedre, Adrian Lester and Rory Kinnear in Othello, and for one month only War Horse (in the UK only). There are many more National Theatre productions and some by other theatres including the Young Vic’s Yerma. This is one of the best stage productions I’ve seen but I’ve no idea how it will come across on film, since the set involved viewing through a glass careen with the rest of the audience opposite, giving the effect of a fish tank. Still, it should be worth seeing if only for Billie Piper’s performance of a lifetime as the anguished would-be mother.. You can rent individual shows or take a monthly subscription at just under £10.

Other streaming services worth looking at are digitaltheatre.com which hosts the excellent Sheridan Smith in Funny Girl, which I thoroughly enjoyed in the theatre) , Zoe Wanamaker and David Suchet in All My Sons, Richard Armitage in The Crucible, the Regents Park Open Air production of Stephen Sondheim‘s Into The Woods and Breach Theatre’s It’s True, It’s True, It’s True which is a funny but shocking dramatization of the trial of the man who raped painter Artemisia Gentileschi which turned into a trial of herself. That alone would be worth a month’s subscription of £9.99 but you can rent it as a single film for £7.99.

At Stage2View you can rent such treats as 42^nd Street, Kinky Boots, An American in Paris and Red starring Alfred Molina as Mark Rothko. Each costs £5 or so.

Amazon & Netflix

Finally, if you subscribe to Netflix, check out Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a film of August Wilson’s play which stars Viola Davis

Over on Amazon Prime, try Antoinette Nwandu’s play Pass Over. Inspired by Waiting For Godot, it’s about two men who are trapped by being black and persecuted by the police. It was filmed by Spike Lee in front of a live audience and Mr Lee knows how to make theatre work on film.

View Theatre To Watch At Home on YouTube