The Lady From the Sea by Henrik Ibsen

Director: Frank Williams
Assistant Director: Cara S. Liander

When a sailor returns to fulfill their promise, a lighthouse keeper’s daughter must choose between her landlocked marriage and the mesmerizing allure of the sea. Hailed as a watershed moment in Ibsen’s writing, The Lady from the Sea dissects issues of duty, marriage, and agency with raw emotion and disarming resonance. A blend of domestic realism, symbolism, myth, and folktale, the drama examines the varieties of love, marriage and its alternatives for women, psychological obsession, free will, and the opposing attractions of land and sea.

This play is centered on Ellida, married to Doctor Wangel, a physician in a small fjord town in northern Norway. He has two daughters (Bolette and Hilde) by his previous wife, now deceased. He and Ellida have a son who died as a baby. Ellida is restless and troubled by a former romantic attachment. Wangel, fearing for Ellida’s mental health, has invited up Arnholm, Bolette’s former tutor, and a former suitor to Ellida, hoping his wife can be helped.

Performances took place in the Theatre at Empire Outlets on Staten Island, right next to the ferry terminal on the following dates:

  • Friday, March 10 – 8:00pm
  • Saturday, March 11 – 8:00pm
  • Sunday, March 12 – 2:00pm
  • Friday, March 17 – 8:00pm
  • Saturday, March 18 – 8:00pm
  • Sunday, March 19 – 2:00pm