HEDDA GABLER. To 28 May.
Tour
HEDDA GABLER
by Henrik Ibsen
Theatre Babel Tour to 28 May 2005
Runs 2hr 5min One interval
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 April at Warwick Arts Centre
Intelligent if not fully accomplished production.Graham McLaren's production opens with Hedda alone listening to a gramophone playing a Bach Cello suite. The autumnal sound suits her; its eventual destruction is a foretaste of her own end. She leaves quickly as her husband arrives to chat with his aunt. It means Hedda's return, for her first scripted appearance, seems calculated.
Instead of her father's dominating portrait McLaren offers a wall decorated with armorial patterns. Fallen leaves lie across the floor, like the waste of Hedda's life. Her husband bores her; she desperately wants to influence someone she regards as important. She picks on reformed bad-boy intellectual Eilert Lovborg, detoxed and back in town with her old friend Thea Elvsted.
Yet Hedda has no role in anyone's life, except through the childbearing she abhors. Eileen McCallum's benevolent aunt (splendidly accomplished), popping sweets into her own and George's mouths at any opportunity, makes her cringe with cheerful insinuations about maternity.
Hedda ends trapped by her own destructive plotting. She's repeatedly isolated on stage when Tesman (Ian Grieve, portly, innocent, but no fool) talks with others away from her at the table where she will commit her first major act of destruction. Apart from one scene with her old lover Eilert, only Simon Roberts' suavely predatory Judge sits by her, a creature of prey reclining in confident insolence. Before the end she's on her knees, embraced by the husband she loathes; she ends cooped up by a blackmailer, his designs (clear as he gropes at her dress) loathsome yet unavoidable.
Sarah Chalcroft gives Thea a fiery passion, the positive to Hedda's negative. Lorna McDevitt shows her character's agonies and short-lived triumphs but many lines sound artificial. John Kazek's Lovborg, a reformed man walking under 110% gravity, lacks much sense of the character's wild side. The minimal set has no stove, but seeing Lovborg's manuscript destroyed by candles visualises the comparison to a baby's curly hair being burnt.
Kai Fischer's lighting relieves the gloom only when the truth that imprisons Hedda comes to light. In all, an intelligent account, if stronger on production ideas than in some individual performances.
Mrs Elvsted: Sarah Chalcroft
George Tesman: Ian Grieve
Eilert Lovborg: John Kazek
Juliana Tesman: Eileen McCallum
Hedda Tesman: Lorna McDevitt
Judge Brack: Simon Roberts
Director/Designer: Graham McLaren
Lighting: Kai Fischer
2005-04-29 01:38:21