Two views of HEDDA - 1.
London.
HEDDA
by Henrik Ibsen adapted by Lucy Kirkwood.
Gate Theatre 11 Pembridge Road W11 3HQ.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm.
Runs 2hr No interval.
TICKETS 020 7229 -0706.
www.gatetheatre.co.uk
Review: Carole Woddis 29 August.
A Hedda to die for.
Earlier this year, the Berlin Schaubuhne theatre’s Thomas Ostermeier brought an outstanding production of Hedda Gabler to the Barbican’s BITE festival. The whole production was set within a modern, urban, three-dimensional glass box. We looked into it from all sides like interlopers and against a background of music by the Beach Boys. Hedda and her crew were entirely recognisable young people of today, slightly louche, naturalistic, a group playing dangerous games with each other.
Something similar has taken over in Carrie Cracknell’s cracking new Gate production, freshly updated in a zippy, witty and powerful version by Lucy Kirkwood, re-located to Notting Hill itself. Hedda (Cara Horgan) and `Georgy’ Tesman (Tom Mison), just returned from a six-month honeymoon in Japan, are greeted by George’s sister, Julia - usually a subsidiary character but here completely rethought as a youngish (33/34) sis-in-law with a bright, multi-coloured ethnic scarf later naughtily dismissed by Hedda as smelling as if it had come from gypsies.
This inter-action and its conversational manner between Julia, Georgy and Hedda sets the tone for a production in which Holly Waddington’s clever combination of modernity and rough plastered walls steadily acquires a hermetic, almost incestuous intensity as these Oxford graduate friends, fall victim first to Hedda and then Hedda to herself.
Horgan’s thin, post-modern protagonist, fashionably geared in black, remains forever a conundrum - the source of her destructive urges stemming from any number of neuroses. She refers to herself as `damaged goods’ and in her own words she is unemployable.
This lack of employability convincingly accounts for her lethal boredom in a modern world dizzy with choice. Horgan, vocally thin, manages to convey a curious, flat amorality absorbingly different to traditional interpretations. If as yet not persuasive enough as a dominating centrifugal force, she is nonetheless surrounded by a wonderfully realised circle of complicated relationships, every one of them sharply defined, from George to Julia, nervy, well-meaning Thea (Alice Patten), bright `Toby’ Brack (Christopher Obi) and hollow-eyed Eli Longford (Adrian Bower). Cracknell’s fabulous production can only add to the Gate’s continuing, soaring reputation. Don’t miss, if you live in London.
Julia Tesman: Cath Whitefield.
George Tesman: Tom Mison.
Hedda Gabler: Cara Horgan.
Thea Eldridge: Alice Patten.
Toby Brack: Christopher Obi.
Eli Longford: Adrian Bower.
Director: Carrie Cracknell.
Designer: Holly Waddington.
Lighting: Katharine Williams.
Choreographer: Temitope Ajose-Cutting
Sound: Edward Lewis.
Assistant director: Alice Butler.
Assistant designer: Ninna Dugin-Vuori.
Production supported by the Norwegian Embassy.
2008-09-04 11:44:36