Think of that jolly ditty Oh I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside, and then try to imagine its absolute antithesis. You'd be close then to the mood of last night's excellent Drama On 3: The Lady From the Sea (Radio 3), a suffocatingly intense adaptation of Ibsen's late play by Frank McGuinness.
The lady from the sea is Ellida, the second wife of a doctor who seems to have a few demons of his own – there are dark hints about a drink problem – but nothing compared to her. She craves the sea air ("I cannot breathe here today") and her daily swim in the nearby fjord is a desultory experience. "The water here in this fjord is diseased," she says flatly.
Every single character sounded clenched up, especially Lia Williams's terrifically fragile Ellida, and held in uncomfortable limbo. From the opening moments of Hannah Eidinow's taut direction, with its underwater soundscape that moved from something like soothing whale noise to a desperate scream, there was also a feeling of everything being submerged, dragged down by the past. "I'm sick for want of the sea," cried Ellida. "It's devouring me." Remarkably, though, there was also a kind of happy ending and welcome truce with the past, bringing clear skies and suddenly calm waters. Elisabeth Mahoney
