Hedda Gabler
\nby Henrik Ibsen
\nAdaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith
\nState Theatre Company.
\nDunstan Playhouse
\nAdelaide Festival Centre.
\nApril 30. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65
\nBookings: BASS 131 246
\nUntil May 18.<\/p>\n
\u201cMen and women,\u201c Henrik Ibsen once observed, \u201cdon\u2019t belong to the same century.\u201d He was writing, in 1889, preliminary jottings for one of his best-known plays, Hedda Gabler<\/i> \u2013 but, even 124 years later, the remark carries a rebuke. Ibsen had made the same point earlier, in his epoch-changing play about gender inequality, A Doll\u2019s House<\/i>, but in Hedda Gabler<\/i> he created an even more problematic circumstance.<\/p>\n
Hedda is a strong, smart, restless young woman in her mid-twenties, who, fearing she is already an \u201cold maid\u201d, has whimsically married Jorgen Tesman, a well-meaning but insipid academic. Almost immediately she regrets her decision. As Ibsen himself notes, \u201cthe daemon in Hedda is she wants to influence another human being, but once that has happened, she despises him.\u201d
\nAs she also despises, and tangles with, others in her circle \u2013 the cynical Judge Brack, circling for casual dalliance, and Eilert Lovborg, a troubled soul whose death wish she herself shares with increasing intensity.<\/p>\n
Director Geordie Brookman\u2019s excellent production for State Theatre benefits greatly from Joanna Murray-Smith\u2019s lucidly assured, accessibly modernised adaptation. Geoff Cobham\u2019s design is indeterminately Scandinavian \u2013 a striking, asymmetrical 1960\u2019s style house frame, featuring a bright living room, sparsely furnished with a couch and writing table. Through the high curtained windows at the back we glimpse a murky vista of charred tree trunks. Apart from a mobile phone there is nothing to contemporize events; Ailsa Paterson\u2019s serviceable, sometimes eccentric , costumes give no clue. Instead, our focus is on Hedda her boredom and her pent-up isolation \u2013 amplified by interludes at the end of each of the four acts featuring DJ Tr!p\u2019s frenetic electronica and Cobham\u2019s inventively expressionist lighting.<\/p>\n
Brookman has gathered an impressive ensemble cast. Cameron Goodall\u2019 s Tesman – dithery, insecure, and besotted with his trophy wife – is disturbingly abject, as is Kate Cheel\u2019s desperate portrait of Thea Elvested, a woman devoted to redeeming the doomed Lovborg. Carmel Johnson is memorable as Aunt Julle, doting on her nephew and wary of his wild wife. Also excellent are Terence Crawford, urbanely sinister as the predatory Brack and Nathan O\u2019Keefe, unforgetable as the tormented writer Lovborg.<\/p>\n
In the demanding role as neurotic, vibrant, alienated Hedda, Alison Bell is outstanding. She makes the time-shift credible; Hedda\u2019s predicament (\u201cit\u2019s really a man\u2019s life she wants to lead,\u201d wrote Ibsen) is not just a 19th<\/sup> century problem. Bell\u2019s notable achievement, and of this exceptional production overall, is to present Hedda\u2019s malign, reckless despair while still retaining our sense of the injustice of her tragedy.<\/p>\n \u201cBell outstanding as Ibsen\u2019s driven woman in search of a \u2018man\u2019s life\u2019, The Australian, May2, 2013. p.13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hedda Gabler by Henrik Ibsen Adaptation by Joanna Murray-Smith State Theatre Company. Dunstan Playhouse Adelaide Festival Centre. April 30. Tickets $ 25 – $ 65 Bookings: BASS 131 246 Until May 18. \u201cMen and women,\u201c Henrik Ibsen once observed, \u201cdon\u2019t belong to the same century.\u201d He was writing, in 1889, preliminary jottings for one of his best-known plays, Hedda Gabler \u2013 but, even 124 years later, the remark carries a rebuke. Ibsen had made the same point earlier, in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5,14,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-24","category-archive","category-state-theatre-company","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2178,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2177\/revisions\/2178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}