[After many years of absence, Gregers Werle accepts an invitation to his father’s house. For a long time, he had avoided contact with Werle senior, a rich industrialist, because his father had been unfaithful to his now dead mother and driven her to alcoholism. At a dinner party where his father is nurturing his relationships to the most important local politicians and presents his housekeeper as a potential new partner, Gregers meets Hjalmar Ekdal again, his best friend from childhood. In conversation with Hjalmar, Gregers finds out that his father not only landed Hjalmar’s father in prison for a fraud in which he himself was involved, but also arranged the match between Hjalmar and his former lover Gina. Gregers knows what he must do. He moves in with Hjalmar and Gina, who also live with her daughter and Hjalmar’s father, to uncover the lies on which their lives are based. Gregers is convinced that finding out the truth about the past and his father’s deceptive schemes will help the whole Ekdal family to live a happier, more honest life.

Two years after »An Enemy of the People« about the importance of the truth, Ibsen wrote »The Wild Duck«, a play that investigates the value of lies. Do we need to lie to ourselves about our lives to be able to live at all? Are truth and absolute honesty always good, or can they be destructive too? And to what extent should we interfere in the lives of others at all?