Mrs Affleck (amazon), a play by Samuel Adamson, is an adaption of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf. The main adaptation is to take the already dark and spooky play and move it to the 1950’s where the sexual repression, guilt and oppression can be emphasized even more. I can’t imagine that theater goers at London’s Cottesloe Theater are exactly singing the tunes as they emerge from the evening’s experience.
The experience is primarily this: Rita Afflect has been waiting for six weeks for her writer-husband to return from the hills of Scotland. Presumably cramped by writer’s block, he has escaped to nature to re-start a book. While waiting the beautiful and rich Mrs Affleck shares her days with a half-sister-in-law and a child with some extensive special needs.
But when Mr Affleck returns he hasn’t written a word. Instead of the intense and sensual reunion she planned, Mrs Affleck is in for something completely different. Mr Affleck’s return brings with it a revelation that is the entire engine of the second act of the play. The whole play deals with guilt, responsibility and the need for committed love in exception circumstances.
There’s more than meets the eye to this story and I’d imagine that a cramped and claustrophobic style would suit this well on stage. Not having seen it – and knowing that it was played in-th3-round at its premier – affects one’s imagined staging.
Naturally Ibsen’s powerful talk of sexual repression, desire and the consequences when the two are exposed, is a heady mix. Choosing to set it in the 1950’s is a clever bit of distancing that might allow the unwary to believe that it isn’t a tale for our times.
But it is. Mrs Affleck is about responsibility and caring in the face of exceptional circumstances. It is a condemnation of self-interested contentment over passionate commitment to others. And, while this isn’t giving anything away, it is a lesson of the profoundly lonely consequences of not grappling and engaging with those we love.
Highly recommended.
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