‘Eyolf’: A Brooding Tale of Selfishness

Faced with as handsome and affecting a production of Henrik Ibsen’s “Little Eyolf” as we find at the outdoor Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, it’s hard to believe this play is so seldom performed.

Perhaps its lack of socially relevant hot buttons, like the subjugation of women, venereal disease or environmental disaster, makes “Little Eyolf” seem less contemporary than its more familiar siblings in the Ibsen canon. Nevertheless, painful psychological truths still resonate in this penetrating depiction of the aftermath of an accidental tragedy involving an innocent young boy.

A meditation on destructive but all-too-human selfishness, the play offers a kind of Nordic variation on Dostoevsky’s proposition that hell is “the suffering of being unable to love.” Albert (George McDaniel) and Rita (Melora Marshall) are the comfortably--though not passionately--married parents of the disabled Eyolf (Terin Jackson), a kind of Nordic variation on Tiny Tim.

Ripping the veil off their middle-class conformity, Ibsen shows how this family merely apes the conventions of parental responsibility. McDaniel reveals that Albert’s professed desire to devote his life to his son is born of dissatisfaction with his career as a writer, while Marshall seethes with Rita’s resentment of motherhood--she wants her husband all to herself. Further darkening the cesspool are the forbidden impulses slithering through the tortured relationship between Albert and his half sister, Asta (Susan Angelo). In the only weak casting link, the earthy simplicity of Asta’s would-be suitor is an awkward fit for Stuart Rogers.

Director Ellen Geer deftly mitigates the story’s frequent brushes with melodrama by emphasizing the unexpected, like Albert’s offhand remark that in the depth of his agony he couldn’t help wondering what he’d be having for dinner. At a sunny afternoon performance, I couldn’t help thinking the same thing--this somber, brooding work is better suited to its alternate evening time slot.

* “Little Eyolf,” Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m.; Fridays at 8 p.m. on July 28 & Aug. 4. Ends Aug. 6. $12.50. (310) 455-3723. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.