When we first encounter Imogen Stubbs's character Rita Allmers, she's wearing dark glasses and shaking, and for the majority of the action she's a focus-pulling wreck who trembles, pouts and assumes peculiar voices.
She displays a bewildering range of emotion in this rarely performed late Ibsen, but to me none of it felt any more than surface show.
Stubbs's acting became more random as the evening progressed and it was simply too much for this tiny studio space to bear. She's capable of far better, as her recent acclaimed turn in Private Lives in Manchester proved.
Next to her, the superb Jonathan Cullen is a model of restraint as Rita's writer husband, Alfred, returned from a solo sojourn full of renewed ardour for the education of their crippled young son, Eyolf. That's not the renewed ardour Rita hoped for, which leads to an intriguing and taboo-busting deviation into the topic of female sexual desire.
It's as a wife rather than a mother that Rita longs to be cherished and we can't help but be impressed that Ibsen tackled the issue half a century before Rattigan got to it in The Deep Blue Sea.
For all the clarity of Anthony Biggs's production, it's not hard to see why this piece is rarely performed. It doesn't quite hit the heights - or plumb the depths - of Ibsen at his finest, and there's some boggy symbolism. The mysterious black-clad Rat Wife (Doreen Mantle) arrives offering to rid the house of things that "gnaw" and "nibble"; shortly after this, disaster strikes. In the unravelling that follows, we learn both why sex has become such a loaded issue for Alfred, and a long-buried family secret that concerns his half-sister Asta (former Holby City actress Nadine Lewington).
Like Cullen, who balances reserve with occasional moments of blazing passion, Lewington offers a finely wrought portrayal, this time of a decent yet lovelorn young woman. When tragedy comes, it's these siblings who guide us through it.
Until May 28. Box Office: 020 7287 2875 (jermynstreettheatre.co.uk)
Little Eyolf
Jermyn Street Theatre
Jermyn Street, SW1Y 6ST
