The Wild Duck, The Norwegian Ibsen Company, Coronet Theatre review - slow burn, devastating climax

“I think this is all very strange,” declares 14-year-old Hedvig Ekdal at the end of The Wild Duck’s third act, just as everything is about to plunge into a terrifying vortex. Alan Lucien Øyen's’s production is pointedly strange from the start, a claustrophobic, Beckett-like terrain in the haunting, possibly haunted space of the Coronet, with black side walls and 13 black chairs, in which happiness stands no chance of survival. The screw turns slowly, but with devastating effect.

Øyen, responsible also for the set and sound design, has whittled down Ibsen's cast, dispensing with the servants and caricatured guests at old Werle's dinner at the start, clerk Graaberg and the "demonic" Molvik, conjured up by fellow lodger Relling.

Even under those circumstances, there was one actor less on Monday night, when I was privileged to be admitted to a remarkable preview: Joachim Rafaelsen, due to play Relling, was off sick and Svein Harry Hauge, already taking the role of Haakon Werle (pictured left), doubled up, at one stage crossing the stage as one character to metamorphose into the other with script in hand. Such a feat only redoubles one's admiration for the magic of the best theatre and the craft of the best performers; the visible text never got in the way of intense drama.

But now to what most audiences will witness from the start: a game of blind man's bluff in which Kåre Conradi's Hjalmar Ekdal, having suffered the blight and the boon of old Ekdal's condescension to him and his ruined father, is spun around by the rest of the cast. The reference will become clear in retrospect to his both to his being "in the dark" about his marriage and daughter, and to Hedvig's failing sight, shared by her real father Haakon. Having shed the initial scene-setting, Øyen is then able to go straight to Gregers Werle's "we were 13 at table", which will be more or less his and the play's last line as well. Most of the characters get a turn to sit on the 13th chair away from the others, starting with Hjalmar, who's sitting there as we enter: a fine and chilling directorial device.

Ibsen's long play, most of which survives intact here – no "version" of the sort that's become too prevalent in London, though Simon Stone's Belvoir Theatre adaptation at the Barbican was a rare superb specimen of that kind – hovers scarily between real and fantastical, actual and symbolical. What is the real meaning of the wing-injured wild duck kept in the Ekdals' attic along with rabbits and chickens? Meanings slip away or change – that's his special genius, and in the Norwegian language, with supertitles in English left, centre and right, the fantastical aspect feels heightened. Maybe there aren't many of the kind of laughs George Bernard Shaw, who was one of the first critics to "get" it, observed at an early performance. But we're fully engaged with the characters, for better or worse. I felt very much like those members of the Rome audience in 1892 who met Gregers' zealous and fatal meddling with cried of "basta!" and "imbecile". Christian Rubeck (pictured above with Hermine Svortevik Oen's Hedvig) makes the interference with the Ekdal family's makeshift togetherness positively sinister, like some unintentional Iago. And in Act Four, Conradi's Ekdal is finally on the rack, rejecting everything he cherished as a result of Rubeck's insistence on absolute truth. This actor has been a stalwart of the Norwegians' regular visits to the Coronet since an agonising Little Eyolf in 2018, and he meets the biggest challenge fearlessly.

Yet no-one falls short: our hearts ache for Yvonne Øyen's dignified, wronged Gina Ekdal and Hermine Svortevik Oen's pitch-perfect teenage Hedvik. Line Verndal's Mrs Sørby brings a kinder sort of truth than the awful Gregers', and Bjorn Skagestad as the old man who substitutes attic wildlife for bears and forests works perfectly in tandem with the imagined life behind the sliding doors at the back. Normally music would be superfluous given such transfixing delivery, but somehow Øyen's eclectic choice – I did ask for a list but haven't had one – heightens the terrors and tragedy, above all in the piano etude which starts simply and accumulates texture and pace during the awful confrontation between Hjalmar and Gina. It's a cruel and comfortless play, but will resonate with you long after the performance is over.

• The Wild Duck at The Coronet Theatre until 2 November
• First Norwegian production at the Coronet reviewed on David Nice's blog
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk