Audience
members are warned about loud gunshots upon entering Northern Stage for the current
production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler;
they are also warned, by means of an added subtitle, that ‘this is not a love
story’.
A
bare table and chairs sit in front of large, tarnished mirror panels which reflect and distort the action on-stage.
Insistent drums, synthesized squeals and discordant piano announce the entrance
of the cast, as maids prepare for the arrival of Jørgen Tesman
and his recent bride, Hedda Gabler.
Ed
Gaughan gives a wonderful performance as Tesman, the shambling, earnest
academic who yearns to satisfy his demanding wife but whose mind is focused firmly
on Dutch cottage industries. Victoria Elliott is also strong as Hedda, strutting around
in a dressing gown as if at a ball, manipulating her companions as a means of escape from the
tedium of married life.
Electric
drones and red lights signal the start of ‘rage reveries’ in which Hedda vents
her frustration at those around her: Donald McBride’s scheming Judge Brack, Rachel
Denning’s nervous Thea Elvsted, the oblivious Tesman and his tiresome devotion to his ageing
aunts. It is the return of Tesman’s reformed rival
Eilert Lövborg (Scott Turnbull) to the town which gives Hedda her chance: in a
world where women are refused control, she plots to take charge of Eilert’s
destiny. Equating destruction with the beauty she seeks, she perpetuates his undoing and casts his manuscript into the
fire.
Unfortunately,
the production comes to a disappointing end when Hedda rises from the dead to heckle the
rest of the company, tearing off her corset to reveal the slogan ‘Knowledge is
power’. The abrupt ending of Ibsen’s play, where Brack, Tesman and Thea are
left in total confusion at Hedda’s brutal suicide, is much more subversive: like
Iago, she will never speak a word from that time forth. Neither logic nor
insanity can explain her actions.
Hedda Gabbler runs until Wednesday 8th March.
Tickets are available here.
