Accidents will happen: Little Eyolf

The nature of theatre is accidental. Things go wrong. I have never seen anything go conspicuously wrong while watching a Broadway show. (Even when I watched The Play That Goes Wrong, everything went right.) However, if I asked around about it, I would probably have more examples than could fill a book.

In the LORT theatre, I have seen something minor, like a cork from a champagne bottle propelled into the house like a bullet. But I have also seen something major - like seeing a foil accidentally fly out of the hand of an onstage actor and stab an audience member in the face. (The tip was blunted, as they all are, but still, it struck her in the cheek.)

During an Off-Broadway performance of William Mastrosimone’s Extremities, a member of the audience collapsed in their seat. The lead actress Farrah Fawcett leapt off the stage, mid-performance, and into the house to administer CPR to the stricken spectator.

And there is another famous story which I think must be apocryphal, but here it is: That one night during an Easter pageant play about the death and resurrection of Christ, the actors playing Roman guards were too fervent during the crucifixion scene. They grabbed their plastic swords and accidentally stabbed the actor on the cross too hard and drew blood. The astounded actor looked down at his wounds and exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, I’ve been stabbed!”

I so hope that’s a true story.

Anyway, on to Ibsen. Here we go.

I once saw a production of Ibsen’s Little Eyolf at the Ibsen Festival at the National Theatre in Oslo, Norway. I was excited to see Ibsen at the Ibsen Festival in Norway - because it was Ibsen. At the Ibsen Festival. In Norway.

Photograph of Henrik Ibsen late in his career.

Ibsen’s “big hits” were of course Hedda Gabler, A Doll’s House, and Ghosts. He wrote 25 plays and his influence was enormous, as he ushered in the age of realism in the theatre. Little Eyolf (1894) is one of Ibsen’s least performed plays and so a short summary is in order.

Alfred and Rita Allmers live by the sea with their young son (Eyolf), who has a paralyzed leg. The couple’s relationship is strained, but Alfred has decided to abandon his life’s work as writer in order to be a full-time father to the boy. However, Eyolf drowns in the sea.

The rest of the play deals with the guilt of the parents who are struggling to go on with their lives. Alfred and Rita blame themselves for Eyolf’s disability because, as a baby, he fell off a table while they were making love. At the end of the play they decide to devote their lives to the helping the poor children who live by the sea.

Set design for a 1907 production of the play

This is the bare bones of the story with the subplots removed. It’s all you need to know.

What I am about to recount should be put in the context of a production with wonderful acting. As you will see, this makes the incident all the more strange. Now to be fair, this was a preview performance. But it was at the National Theatre in Oslo and it was a full house.

At the beginning of the third act (Eyolf had drowned at the end of Act 1), the character of an engineer has to hoist a flag on a flagpole which was permanently part of the set, and attached at the top to the grid. The flagpole was about 12 or 15 feet high and the flag was to be hoisted at half mast, symbolizing the dead Eyolf. It is a piece of symbolism in a play rife with symbolism, as all of Ibsen’s plays are. Fair enough. The actor had trouble with the pulley that made the flag ascend, but after a few seconds he was able to hoist it up.

Please keep this in mind as I cut now to the end of the play. And if there is anything mitigating about this story, it is that, again, the acting was good throughout. But unfortunately, this story is not about the acting.

It is end of the play and the last lines of the play have been uttered (in Norwegian of course):

Alfred: Up toward the mountains. Toward the stars. And the great silence.

Rita: (outstretching her hand to him.) Thank you.

There is now nothing left to do but hoist the flag again, this time to the top - because Alfred and Rita, through their grief, have found a new purpose in life. After the flag would go up, the lights would fade, there’d be a curtain call, and we’d all go home. The actor playing Alfred pulls on the rope to pull the flag up - and the entire apparatus comes down: the metal pulley at the top of the pole, the rope, and flag. The flagpole is still there. But the actor is holding everything else. If I was the stage manager, I would have just blacked the lights out and called it an evening.

But that was not what happened.

The lights did not go out because, I am just assuming, the cue for the final blackout is the flag being raised. So the play is essentially over, the actors playing Rita and Alfred are alone onstage with no more lines to say and the lights remain lit. I suppose one of them could have just ad-libbed, “Let’s go in,” and exited together.

But they didn’t.

So the actor decides to try to toss the flag and rope to the top of the pole, hoping that it will catch onto the top and somehow stay there. But after a couple of tries it becomes clear that this is not going to happen. The stage remains lit, and a full house is watching. So the actor does the only other thing he can think of.

He tries to climb the pole.

Now, this is not a pole with divots, or rungs or anything to get your feet on to: It is a completely smooth pole. Like a stripper pole. Wooden, yes, but the same idea. So, with flag and rope and pulley slung over his shoulder, he tries to pull himself up the pole by his arms, with his ankles wrapped around the shaft. You know, like they made you do in gym. But he’s not an athlete, he is not a young actor, nor is he an especially trim actor - he is a character actor who has been cast as a father. And he gets two feet off the ground and slides back down. Now again, if I were the stage manager…..but I’m not. So the lights stay on. If anything, to us in the audience, they seem to get brighter.

So, he tries again to shimmy up the pole. And he cannot.

So, he tries again. And he cannot.

The actress playing his wife Rita says nothing as she watches him in disbelief. In this moment she is alchemically transformed from an actor to member of the audience without ever leaving her place. And she and the rest of us, as one, watch him try to make it up that pole.

At no sporting event that I have ever attended, on TV or in person, have I ever wanted a someone to succeed as much as I did as I watched that actor struggle, fail, struggle, fail, struggle, fail, and try again.

How long does this last? Three, four, five minutes? We can literally see the sweat roll of the actor’s face as he tries again and to climb that pole and squeaks back down.

By now, the drama of the Allmers family and their personal tragedy has been completely obliterated from our memories and been replaced by a new, immediate, and more human drama and tragedy.

Finally, by some grace of God, he manages to get up far enough to hook that flag on something and slide back down - in exhaustion and hollow triumph.

The lights finally start to slowly fade on the strangest five minutes I’ve ever been a witness to.

This is the overwhelming, one-of-a-kind experience that can only happen in a theatre. I feel it on those extremely rare occasions when something goes horribly wrong; but I also feel it on those equally rare occasions when something goes extraordinarily right.

And in both cases, your connection with the actors on stage is as close as strangers can possibly be. The communion is instant, absolute, and lasting.